Jobless rate seen easing
further due to ‘BBB’
5.3 percent
By Cai U. Ordinario

T

@cuo_bm

he country’s unemployment rate
could fall further as civil works on
nine infrastructure projects under
the “Build, Build, Build” (BBB) program
would begin in the second half of 2018,
according to the National Economic and
Development Authority (Neda).

achieve its goal of creating 1
million jobs this year.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released on Wednesday the results of the January 2018

business news source
of the year

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Is migration the
Philippine ‘Dutch
disease’?

The estimated
unemployment rate in
January, according to the
Philippine Statistics Authority

Labor Force Survey (LFS), which
showed that the unemployment
rate declined to 5.3 percent. The
Neda said this is the lowest jobless
rate recorded for all rounds of the
January LFS in the past decade and
is within the government’s target
of 4.7 percent to 5.3 percent.
See “Jobless rate,” A2

2016 ejap journalism awards

Rene E. Ofreneo

laborem exercens

S

ome observers claim that migration is the “oil well” of the
Philippines. The remittances of the 11 million or so overseas
Filipino workers (OFWs), amounting to over $30 billion a
year, help sustain the growth of the economy, even if our industry
and agriculture are eroded and unemployment affects 3 million
Filipinos. This is the reason some economists even call migration
as the country’s “Dutch disease.”
Continued on A12

griculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol has insisted
the reports on rice shortage
are nothing but “fake news.” But Trade
Secretary Ramon M. Lopez admitted
there has been an increase in the prices
of rice the past weeks, at the time the

National Food Authority announced
its stockpile is nearing depletion.
These statements—showing prices increased under the context of a
fake shortage—made the Philippine
Competition Commission (PCC) eager
than ever to find out if anticompetitive practices are really rampant in
the rice industry.
See “PCC,” A2

uried in the noise created by
the plan to close Boracay is the
specter of losing unique species—particularly the flying fox bats
and Puka shells—due to the island’s
overcrowding.
But the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
is aware of this threat, which is why
it sent a seven-man team, headed
by Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim
of the Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), to Boracay to assess the
population of the Puka shell, flying
fox bats and other species, whose
population on the island have been

observed to be dwindling over the
past several years.
“Their mission is to conduct an assessment and make recommendations to the secretary. One of their
missions is the Puka Shell Beach. It is
home to the Puka shell,” Undersecretary Jonas R. Leones, the designated
spokesman of Environment Secretary
Roy A. Cimatu, told the BusinessM irror.
Lim is a veterinarian and expert
in marine turtle conservation. Other
members are experts in their own
fields; a wildlife expert, wetlands expert, two marine experts in science,
and a Geographic Information System
specialist. The team is also accompanied by an expert on Boracay.
Continued on A12

PESO exchange rates n US 51.9260

By Lenie Lectura @llectura
& Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
@joveemarie

W

Conclusion

HILE there are moves
to amend the economic
provisions of the 1987
Constitution, some cautioned
against doing so, citing some of
these provisions contributed to several economic sectors’ development.
For the energy sector, a lawmaker cited two provisions in the
Constitution that contributed to
the growth.
One is Article II, Section 20 under State policies, where “The State
recognizes the indispensable role
of the private sector, encourages
private enterprise and provides
incentives to needed investments.”
Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian,
energ y committee chair man,
said the enactment of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act
(Epira) of 2001 transitioned the
power industry out of a vertically
integrated structure with the government at the center.
“Instead, the Epira allowed the
private sector to be at the forefront
of developing the industry, albeit
guided by the policies of the government,” Gatchalian said. “One
offshoot of this provision in the
Constitution is the enactment of

A casino stands on a reclaimed area in Parañaque City. Lawmakers believe amending the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution, especially on
foreign ownership, would allow the entry of more investments in several businesses. NONIE REYES

the Renewable Energy [RE] Act,
which jump-started the growth of
variable renewable-energy industry in the country, led by the private
sector but supported by incentives

from the government.”
One incentive under the RE Act
is the feed-in-tariff (FiT).
The FiT is basically an incentive
in the form of guaranteed power

rate given to RE producers for 20
years. The FiT rates are based on
installation ceilings set by Department of Energy (DOE). The
Continued on A2

“We want them to be guided on the land-use code.
There, you will give classification of lands, taxation of
idle lands, if the regions want to continue agrarian
reform, it will already be there,” he said, adding that
many of the guidelines have been set already.
“It’s just to put it in one comprehensive code that
would guide the regions since we are devolving the
economic powers to the region, or we are proposing
to do so,” he added.
Con-com’s intention, Aguilar said, is to liberalize
economic policies as much as possible, but noted
that they still have to look into some areas that are
restricted, such as land, media, educational institutions
and profession.
The Con-com is also set to vote on the new
provisions on political dynasties early next week in
an en banc session. Its members had a consensus
to include in the proposed revised constitution a
“self-executing provision” that will regulate political
dynasties, that no relative of an incumbent official
up to the second degree of consanguinity or affinity
shall be allowed to run simultaneously and to succeed
the incumbent official for positions of governor,
mayor, or district representative and other local
officials, according to Julio Teehankee, chairman of
the Subcommittee on Political Reforms and Leveling
the Playing Field.
“What we are trying to avoid is monopoly
of power and perpetuity, which will result in
an unhealthy political system, because the very
lifeblood of a working democracy is a circulation
of candidates and winners in the election,” said
Teehankee, former College of Liberal Arts dean at
De La Salle University.
The Con-com has also agreed that the president
and vice president will be elected as a team,
according to University of Santo Tomas Political
Science Professor Edmund Tayao, chairman of the
Subcommittee on Creation and Structure of States
and Subnational Governments.
On Tuesday the committee has also agreed that
the country will still have a bicameral Congress.

Jobless rate. . .
Continued from A1

“There is already a boom in public
construction. That is the reason for the
13.2-percent increase in jobs in the sector. But you’re right in saying that this is
not yet [due to] the BBB,” Edillon said in
an interview.
“The government is still working out
the job requirements... for the different combinations of the BBB projects,”
she added.
Former Labor Undersecretary and University of the Philippines economist Rene
Ofreneo agreed with Edillon’s pronouncement that the BBB program could help create more jobs in the coming months.
“It seems the government is moving
faster now compared to previous years.
Maybe [Budget Secretary Benjamin E.]
Diokno released funds [for government
infrastructure projects] faster,” Ofreneo
told the BusinessMirror.
He said, however, that risks, such as
the ban on deployment to Kuwait and the
possible closure of Boracay island, could

BMReports
BusinessMirror

One Charter under siege: Would amending
Constitution enhance PHL economic devt?
Continued from A1

Energy Regulatory Commission is the
agency that sets the FiT rates.

Sectoral growth

GATCHALIAN also cited Article XII Section 15 under National Economy and
Patrimony, which states “the Congress
shall create an agency to promote the
viability and growth of cooperatives
as instruments for social justice and
economic development.”
“Electric cooperatives take part in the
vital role of promoting social justice and
economic development through their
missionary electrification mandate,”
Gatchalian explained. “In the same
way, electric cooperatives contribute
to the growth in the energy sector by
providing electricity to far-flung areas,
thereby improving the lives of their
residents. Furthermore, this missionary electrification mandate has also
increased overall energy demand for
the entire nation.”
State-owned National Power Corp.
is mandated to perform the missionary electrification function through
what is called the Small Power Utilities
Group, or Spug. The Spug is responsible
for providing power generation, and its
associated power delivery systems in areas that are not connected to the main
transmission system.
For Eric Francia, president of AC Energy,
the power arm of Ayala Corp., the 1987
Constitution’s support to the private sector
underlines its importance in the growth
threaten efforts of the government to
create more jobs.
Ofreneo also noted that the real challenge for the Philippines is to increase
employment in heavy industries, which
will provide jobs to more Filipinos.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary
Ernesto M. Pernia pushed for the passage of key measures such as the Ease of
Doing Business bill and Package 2 of the
government’s tax-reform program, which
will lower the corporate income tax and
rationalize fiscal incentives.
Pernia also called for the crafting of a
legal and regulatory framework that will
allow part-time work, especially in lowpaying jobs.
“This will especially benefit school
dropouts so they can study or be trained
further and get themselves into higher
paying jobs in the future,” he said.

Employment situation

The January 2018 LFS showed the
country’s jobless rate eased to 5.3 percent,
from 6.6 percent a year ago. The latest LFS
data indicated that 41.8 million Filipinos
are employed.

of the energy sector.
“Our constitution declares the indispensable role of private sector and the
need to provide incentives for needed investments. These provide the foundation
for important laws, such as BOT [buildoperate-transfer], [the] Epira and the RE
Act, all of which enabled private-sector
participation in the power sector,” Francia
said. “We have therefore seen significant
investments and benefitted from lower
cost of power.”

Open economy

ONE of t he subcommittees of t he
House Committee on Constitutional
Amendments has proposed to delete
the provision in the 1987 Constitution
providing the “60-40” limit on foreign
equity sharing.
The subcommittee chaired by Rep. Vicente S.E. Veloso of Leyte said the new
proposal effectively provides for an “open
economy.”
During one of its recent discussions,
the committee said the areas that will
be freed from restrictions include the
exploitation, development and utilization of natural resources, ownership
of alienable lands, franchise on public
utilities and ownership of educational
institutions, mass media and advertising, among others.
Under the draft proposal, the matter
of equity sharing, as well as the terms
and conditions involving joint ventures
and other undertakings involving the
aforementioned areas shall be determined
through legislations.
PSA data also indicated that the underemployment rate went up to 18 percent in
January 2018, from last year’s 16.3 percent.
“These improvements in the labor market indicate that more Filipinos are encouraged to join and rejoin the labor force, and
that more people are being employed. This
signals that the economy is responding
positively to the economic reforms and
programs that the government has been
laying down,” Pernia said.
PSA data showed that the share of agriculture in total employment expanded
to 26 percent in January 2018, from 25.5
percent in January 2017, while industry’s
share also rose to 18.1 percent, from 17.4
percent last year.
Edillon and Ofreneo agreed that the
improvement in agriculture employment
was due to the relatively good weather conditions experienced in the last
quarter of 2017.
Usually, Ofreneo said the Philippines is
hit by destructive typhoons in the fourth
quarter. But the absence of typhoons during the period may have allowed more
farmers to hire additional workers for their
annual December harvest.

Veloso’s subcommittee is one of four
subcommittees consolidating all proposals
to create the draft of a proposed Philippine
Federal Constitution.
For Gatchalian, ownership issues in the
Constitution should also be addressed in
any moves to amend the Charter. Insofar
as the energy sector is concerned, he cited
Article XII, Section 2.
This constitutional provision has
limited investments in the upstream
oil industry and RE like solar, wind,
g e ot he r m a l , h y d r o p o w e r, r u n - o f river hydro, ocean to Filipino citizens, corporations or associations, or
coproduction, joint venture or production agreements with Filipino citizens
cor porat ions, or associat ions w it h
at least 60 percent of capital owned
by Filipinos.
Gatchalian also said that, the same
article, but this time in Section 3, poses
some difficulties for 100-percent foreignowned thermal-generation companies (i.e.,
coal) who need to find a partner who can
provide the land or at least be willing to
lease the land to them.

Public oath

WITH the moves to amend the Charter,
the leadership of the House of Representatives vowed that all proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution will be
presented to the public through massive
information campaign.
The Lower House leaders added all
amendments will be debated and voted
upon by three-fourths of all members of
the Senate and House of Representatives.
PSA data also showed the industry
sector employed an additional 719,000
workers after expanding by 10.5 percentage points to 18.1 percent in January 2018,
led by the increase in employment in construction and manufacturing.
“More jobs are expected to be created during the country’s infrastructure
buildup, which will not only ease traffic
and promote regional development but also
generate more quality jobs,” Pernia said.
Services, meanwhile, was the only sector that saw a lower share in 2018 at 55.9
percent, from 57.1 percent in 2017.
Ofreneo said this may be due to the
possibility that the business-process outsourcing sector has already hit a plateau.
He also cited as a factor the decline in
tourism activities in Mindanao due to the
Marawi City siege.
However, Edillon said that, while the
share of services was lower than last year,
there was still an increase in the actual
number of jobs created in the sector.
“In terms of job generation, there was
an increase of 3.8 percent over the previous
year. There may have been some reallocation, hence the lower share. But absolute
numbers increased,” she said.

‘Ineffective order’

Federation of Free Workers Vice President Julius Cainglet said the 1.3-percent
hike in underemployment shows that Department Order (DO) 174 issued by the
Department of Labor and Employment
(DOLE) is “ineffective.” DO 174 imposed
more stringent rules on contractualization.
“We can also relate this to the contractualization of labor, which DO 174
has failed to address. Our workers may
have work today, but there is no certainty of work tomorrow,” Cainglet told
the BusinessMirror.
Associated Labor Union-Trade Union
Congress of the Philippines spokesperson Alan Tanjusay said this also a cause
for concern, since underemployment has
been rising in the last three years.
“If reports about regularization of
workers in fast-food chains, malls, telecom companies among others are accurate; and granting that the DTI’s [Department of Trade and Industry] formula of
regularizing workers with the service providers and manpower agencies instead of
the principal employer have been applied,
all these should not translate or add up
to a mere 1.3 percent in the employment
rate,” Cainglet said.
Tanjusay said only a few contractual
workers benefited from the government’s campaign against the controversial work scheme.
“The DOLE reported regularization of
120,000 after DO 174 took effect in March
last year. It’s a very small number,” Tanjusay said. With Samuel P. Medenilla

www.businessmirror.com.ph

PCC. . .

Continued from A1

In an interview with the BusinessMirror, PCC Commissioner Johannes R. Bernabe said conducting a
preliminary investigation on rice traders is an option
should the issues paper on the industry point to possible violations of the competition law. However, he
also said the more logical thing to do is to launch a
market study first to be able to acquire firsthand information from the ground.
“We can launch a preliminary investigation, or—
if the issues paper is not sufficiently fleshed out
insofar as anticompetition is concerned—we can
commission a proper market study [that] focuses
on the indicated anticompetitive situations,” the
PCC official said.
Under a preliminary investigation Bernabe explained that the regulator will be looking for possible
violations already. As for a market study, he said, it can
be compared to a field report wherein competition
experts will conduct research and interviews to get a
grip of the entire trading system and where anticompetitive practices might take place in that process. “[If ]
market study, that is like a follow-through on the issues paper. That is a more in-depth look [where] we
will be starting to talk to individual firms or entities
[that] are in the sector, like the traders.”
He pointed out that investigating the rice industry is more than ever crucial, with the recent reported
shortage on the staple that caused prices to increase.
Piñol called the shortage as nothing but fake news allegedly operated by several traders.
But Lopez, citing the trade department’s price
monitoring, said regular-milled rice was at P40 per
kilogram in February, compared to P37 during the
same month last year. Year-on-year, well-milled rice
is priced at P42 per kilogram against P40, while premium rice is at P46 against P45.
This reported shortage and sudden increase in
the prices are just two of the many reasons Bernabe
cited for the PCC to conduct an in-depth look into
rice trading in the country. “For the PCC, our concern
is [if ] there are sufficient information or basis to look
into possible anticompetitive agreements—so that
would be collusion and cartel-like behavior—in the
industry,” he said.
“That is something that, hopefully, the issues paper can bore some inputs on so that it can take us to
an appropriate course of action, whether to conduct
a full-blown market study preparatory to a preliminary investigation. Right now, we don’t know yet,” he
added. In spite of what he called a “delicate situation,”
Bernabe hopes the PCC will be able to get the necessary information to do a preliminary investigation on
the rice industry.
Either way, the PCC official vowed it will throw in
all the needed work to uncover possible anticompetitive practices—may that be cartels or collusions—in
the industry providing the staple of the population.
“Well, we are always perceived to be stepping on the
toes of some business entities [and] does not have to
be in the rice sector,” he said.
“Right now, in the rice sector, we are still off the
radar. However, once we identify the anticompetitive
practices, it becomes a real issue,” Bernabe said.
Rice is just one of the nine sectors the PCC is
currently investigating for behaviors that might
be harming consumer welfare. Other sectors under probe by the regulator are meat and poultry,
pharmaceutics, land transportation, air transportation, agricultural credit, digital commerce, retail
and telecommunications.

Peso. . .

Continued from A12

largest source of foreign income for the Philippines
after exports.
Still, the benefits of a weaker currency are being
eroded by rising living costs in their homeland, the
three Filipino workers said.
“Yes, the exchange rate is higher when you covert into pesos, but the money will also buy you
less goods,” said de la Cruz, who was on her way
back to Hong Kong from Manila after spending
a week in her hometown of Laoag City in northern Philippines. “The weaker peso helps only to a
certain extent.”

Inflation watch

Inflation accelerated to 3.9 percent in February
under a new series using a 2012 base year, threatening to breach the central bank’s target band of 2
percent to 4 percent. Putting pressure on prices are
increased levies, higher oil prices and a depreciating peso, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez
III said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Central Bank Governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr.
said the pick-up in inflation last month remains
within target and most likely in 2018 as well, signaling that the monetary authority will likely keep
policy rates unchanged this month. The peso has
weakened 4 percent this year to 51.98 per dollar
as of the close of trading in Manila on Wednesday.
“The peso should weaken” with less support
from the Central Bank, helping keep the value
of remittances inflated, said Joey Cuyegkeng, an
economist in Manila at ING Groep NV, who revised
his year-end forecast for the currency to 52, from
51.30. “Dollar earners, including overseas Filipino
worker families, benefit from the recent significant
weakness of the peso.” Bloomberg News

The Nation
BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

There’s probable cause
to impeach Sereno–Umali

T

he chairman of the House
Committee on Justice on
Wednesday expressed confidence that there is probable cause
to impeach Chief Justice Maria
Lourdes A. Sereno.
Rep. Reynaldo Umali of the
Second District of Oriental Mindoro, the panel chairman, issued
the statement as his committee is
set to vote today (Thursday) to determine the existence of probable
cause to remove Sereno.
“A simple reading of the evidence presented and the testimonies of the witnesses and her
[Sereno] refusal to controvert
these during our extensive hearings will lead us to establish probable cause to impeach Chief Justice
Sereno,” Umali said.
Committee members, he added,
will determine probable cause based
on each ground raised by complainant lawyer Larry Gadon.
The impeachment complaint
filed by Gadon contains four
grounds, including corruption,
culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust and
other high crimes. The complaint
also alleged 27 acts constituting
the offenses charged against the
Chief Justice.
Moreover, Umali said, his panel
will also push through the approval of the committee report
and the Articles of Impeachment
next week.
“As far as my committee is concerned, all procedures will be done
to send our report to the plenary
before our break [on March 21],”
Umali said.
Last Tuesday the leadership of
the House of Representatives said

UMALI: “As far as
my committee
is concerned, all
procedures will be
done to send our
report to the plenary
before our break
[on March 21].”

it will wait first for the Supreme
Court ruling on the removal
petition against Sereno through
quo warranto petition before the
plenary voting on the Articles of
Impeachment.
House Majority Leader Rodolfo
C. Fariñas Sr. of the First District of
Ilocos Norte said “there will be no
plenary voting [before our Lenten
break on March 21], but we will
approve it at committee level.”
Also, Speaker Pantaleon D.
Alvarez of the First District of
Davao del Norte said the House
may opt to await the SC ruling before the plenary decides
whether to send the case to the
Senate for trial.
He added there is also nothing
wrong if the justice committee is
preparing the Articles of Impeachment even before the actual voting
to speed up the process.
Alvarez added he is leaving it
to the hands of Fariñas to map
out the proper course of action
for the House.
If the case reaches the Senate for
trial, Alvarez said he would leave the
task of prosecuting Sereno to other
more qualified lawmakers. Instead,
Alvarez added, he would rather stay
on the sidelines and watch the proceedings. Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

House Speaker to senators:
Give divorce bill a chance

T

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
@joveemarie

he leadership of the House of
Representatives on Wednesday
appealed to the Senate to give
the lower chamber-initiated divorce
bill a chance to become a law.
Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez
of the First District of Davao del
Norte , principal author of the bill,
urged the Senate to recognize the
clamor of many Filipinos for the
passage of marriage dissolution
and divorce bill, and prioritize
the approval of such legislation.
“I hope so, because many people
are waiting for the passage of that
law, as we can see in the comments
in social media,” said Alvarez, who
was at the Senate for the confirmation hearing of the Commission on
Appointments on his nomination
as colonel in the reserve force of the
Philippine Navy-Marines.
Unlike in the House, where the
marriage dissolution and divorce bill
received bipartisan support, several
senators have expressed opposition
to the passage of the bill.
Responding to an informal survey by the BusinessMirror, Sens.
Franklin M. Drilon, Joel J. Villanueva, Paolo Benigno A. Aquino IV,
Francis G. Escudero, Vicente C. Sotto
III, Sherwin T. Gatchalian, Cynthia

A. Villar, Panfilo M. Lacson Sr.
and Gregorio Honasan II indicated
strong opposition to the divorce bill,
offering instead to review existing
processes for civil annulment of
marriages on the rocks.
Senate leaders have yet to firm up
a counterpart measure of the Housebacked divorce bill, while several
senators thumbed it down.
Instead, senators preferred a less
costly option, such as relaxing rules
on annulment.
Moreover, Alvarez said that after
the House approves the bill, they
would immediately forward it to the
Senate for its own action.
“Once approved in the plenary, it
would be forwarded to the Senate,”

he said. The House Committee on
Population and Family Relations
already approved a substitute bill
consolidating various proposals for
marriage dissolution and divorce.
Earlier, Alvarez said the House
would likely approve the marriage
dissolution and divorce bill before
Congress adjourns on March 23.
Among others, the substitute
bill recognizes as grounds for marriage dissolution or divorce the same
grounds for legal separation under
the Family Code.
The bill also provides for summary judicial proceedings to expedite the resolution of petition for
marriage dissolution/divorce without regard to technical rules. The
petitioner has the option to be represented by lawyer or not.
The following grounds may be
subjected to summary judicial proceeding: de facto separation for at
least five years, bigamous marriage,
legal separation for at least two
years, imprisonment for six years,
gender reassignment surgery, and
joint petition of the spouses for the
dissolution of their marriage.
However, the substitute bill also
provides for a six-month coolingoff period, during which the court

I hope so [for the divorce bill to
become a law] because many
people are waiting for the passage
of that law, as we can see in the
comments in social media.”—Alvarez

shall exercise all efforts to reunite
and reconcile the parties.
Should reconciliation happen,
the marriage dissolution/divorce
proceedings, if pending, shall be
terminated. If there is already a
final decree of absolute divorce, it
shall be set aside.
The bill, meanwhile, penalizes
spouses who are guilty of collusion
with imprisonment of five years and
a fine of P200,000.
It said absolute divorce is judicially decreed after the fact of an irremediably broken marital union or
a marriage vitiated from the start.
The measure added the state shall
assure that the proceedings for the
grant of absolute divorce shall be affordable and inexpensive, particularly for indigent litigants or petitioners,
and observe an efficient process.
The bill said the option of absolute divorce is a pro-woman legislation because, in most cases, since
it is the wife who is entitled to a divorce as a liberation from an abusive
relationship and to help her regain
dignity and self-esteem.
It said a divorce decree shall include provisions for the care and
custody of children, protection of
their legitimate, termination and liquidation of the conjugal partnership
of gains or the absolute community,
and alimony for the innocent spouse.
Even as absolute divorce is instituted, the measure said the state has
the role of strengthening marriage
and family life by undertaking relevant prenuptial and postmatrimonial programs and activities.

PCC chief sees 33% decline
in notifications for mergers
and acquisitions this year

DOJ indicts
ex-Top Gear
PHL scribe
for ‘cyber libel’

By Elijah Felice E. Rosales

T

he Department of Justice
(DOJ) has filed criminal
charges against the former
editor in chief of motoring news
web site Top Gear Philippines in
connection with an online libel
complaint filed by a man who was
mistakenly tagged in a road-rage
incident in Manila.
The DOJ panel of prosecutors
found probable cause to indict Vernon Sarne on charges of violation of
the libel provision of the Cybercrime
Prevention Act of 2012, filed by
Nestor Punzalan after he was mistakenly identified in a report published by the web site as the gunman
behind the shooting of cyclist Mark
Vincent Geralde in Quiapo, Manila.
Punzalan, in his complaint,
accused Sarne of imputing him
as the suspect who drove a red
Hyundai Eon and shot Geralde
dead on July 26, 2016.
After checking the license plate
of the Hyundai vehicle from the
closed-circuit television footage
of the incident, Sarne posted on
the Facebook page of Top Gear the
complainant’s Facebook account
and his Hyundai Eon.
“The above posts by the officials
of Top Gear Philippines allegedly
subjected complainant and his
wife to public ridicule, trauma,
shame, casting dishonor, discredit
and contempt,” read the resolution approved by Senior Deputy
State Prosecutor Richard Anthony
Fadullon and Acting Prosecutor
General Jorge Catalan Jr.
“He admitted having posted
the subject photo and video of
complainant’s vehicle and assumed full responsibility on the
said act,” the resolution noted,
adding that the alleged offense
checked off all the elements for it
to be considered as libel. The case
was referred to the City Prosecutor of Manila on February 23. PNA

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Thursday, March 8, 2018 A3

@alyasjah

T

Hot items

Customs Commissioner Isidro S. Lapeña presents to the media a sizable quantity of “misdeclared” fireworks and cigarettes with a
combined value of P8.89 million seized by the Bureau of Customs-Port of Manila. Nonnie Reyes

hr ee committees of the
House of Representatives on
Wednesday approved a priority
measure restructuring the Philippine
National Railway System (PNRS).
In a joint hearing, House Committees on Government Enterprises, Legislative Franchise and Transportation
endorsed for plenary approval a substitute bill creating of the Philippine
National Railway Authority (PNRA).
Under the bill, the PNRA shall regulate all aspects of the operations of
railway corporations, while its board
of directors shall set the necessary
routes, fares and standards on safety
and security.
The bill also mandates the authority to establish three separate
corporations—the Luzon Railway
Corp., Visayas Railway Corp. and
Mindanao Railway Corp.—to operate

railways in Luzon, the Visayas and
Mindanao. The corporations shall
exist for a term of 50 years, and renewable for another 50.
The measure said the authorized
capital stock of each corporation shall
be P30 billion, while 20 percent, or P6
billion, shall be initially paid up and
the balance shall be paid from a continuing annual appropriation of not
less than P2 billion.
However, the bill said railway operators are required to secure a franchise
from Congress.
It said operators with an existing franchise or concession agreement with any government agency
are granted three years to secure a
legislative franchise.
The measure also contains penal
provisions for acts harmful to the
sustainability and safety of trains,

tracks, equipment and other assets,
including the safety and security of
the riding public.
The committees also accepted an
amendment, which prohibits the issuance of restraining orders and preliminary injunctions.
“No court in the Philippines shall
have the jurisdiction to issue any restraining order, preliminary injunction
or preliminary mandatory injunction in
any case, dispute or controversy involving any contract or project being implemented by the authority, to prohibit any
person or persons, or entity or government official from proceeding with or
continuing on the execution or implementation of such contract or project,
or pursuing any lawful activity necessary for the execution, implementation
or operation of such railway project or
system,” the bill said. Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

he country’s antitrust regulator is expecting notifications
for mergers and acquisitions
(M&A) to go down by at least 33 percent this year with the adjusted thresholds for such transactions.
Arsenio M. Balisacan, chairman
of the Philippine Competition Commission, said the PCC is anticipating
lesser notifications for M&A this year
in light of the higher thresholds bound
for regulation. He believes this will
benefit the nascent agency, given its
limited resources and logistics.
“Assuming more or less the same
profile of mergers and acquisitions
this year, the commission expects
a 33-percent reduction in the intake of notifications with the new
thresholds. In turn, this will allow
the commission to deploy resources
toward the effective implementation of a holistic merger control
policy,” Balisacan said at a news
briefing on Wednesday.
The PCC on Monday raised the
thresholds for M&A to P5 billion
for size of person and P2 billion for
size of transaction from P1 billion.
With the recalibration, the antitrust
agency is now mandated to adjust
the thresholds annually beginning
March next year to reflect movements and developments in the
country’s economy.
Balisacan said the PCC’s decision to recalibrate the thresholds
was an outcome of the regulator’s
“careful study and measured deliberations after engaging in dialogue
with members of the business community, receiving and reviewing
numerous merger and acquisition
transactions, as well as observing
recent developments in the Philippine economy.”
“Perhaps, it is worth emphasizing
that the PCC has adjusted the thresholds in recognition that onerous rules

can stifle business activity and impede
the entry of competition. Indeed,
guided by the commission planning
exercise in November of last year, the
commission is working to establish
frameworks, the threshold adjustment
included, to ensure speedy and transparent processing of transactions that,
from the onset, do not appear to pose
any risk on healthy market competition,” Balisacan said.
He added M&A with a size of
transaction below P2 billion and
size of parties less than P5 billion
“are characteristically less likely to
raise competition concerns.” Size of
transaction is the value of the assets
or revenues of the acquired entity,
while the size of party, otherwise
known as size of person, refers to
the assets or revenues of the ultimate
parent entity.
In Policy Statement 18-01, the
PCC claimed it assessed 46 proposed mergers and acquisitions last
year. Of these, 15 proposed transactions had a size of transaction
below P2 billion or a size of person
less than P5 billion.
With the adjusted thresholds
and anticipated lesser notifications
for M&A, the PCC chief believes the
agency can now focus its attention
on its other functions, such as market monitoring, policy advocacy,
competition enforcement and the
conduct of market studies.
Balisacan, however, warned firms
not to test the regulator’s patience by
eluding its processes on mergers and
acquisitions. He said the PCC can, and
will, exercise its motu propio powers
against those who will try to violate the
antitrust law or evade the mandatory
competition review.
“We remain watchful of the developments and shifts in the market.
The commission remains sharply
aware of, and will continue to examine, other equally effective predictors of harm to market competition,”
Balisacan said.

ith the onset of the
summer season, the
Department of Environment
and Natural Resources (DENR) is
urging local government units (LGUs)
to plan ahead of the anticipated
increase in tourism activities.
The DENR believes that more
tourists mean more garbage that
could lead to a serious solid-waste
management problem.
In a news statement issued on
Wednesday, Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu urged LGUs
to plan ahead and ensure proper
waste disposal, particularly in
tourist destinations.
“Local government officials
should amplify their measures in
managing wastes, particularly in
tourism sites, as we expect an increased volume of garbage with the
arrival of tourists this summer season,” the DENR chief said.
At the same time, Cimatu appealed to tourists to be responsible for their wastes and avoid
littering, especially along the

shorelines and in the waters.
“We do not want the same situation in Boracay Island to happen to
other vacation sites. LGUs should
be keen in monitoring waste issues in their areas of jurisdiction.
Segregation activities should be
strictly implemented. Tourists
should also throw their garbage
only in designated trash bins,”
Cimatu said.
Cimatu was tasked by President
Duterte to address the environmental problems besetting Boracay Island. Aside from the water
pollution because of discharge of
untreated wastewater, Boracay is
faced with a serious solid-waste
management problem because of
increased tourist arrivals that exceeded its hosting capacity.

Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act
of 2000, mandates the segregation
of solid wastes, which includes the
order that LGUs shall divert at least
25 percent of all solid-waste disposal
facilities through use, recycling and
composting activities and other resource-recovery activities.
Under the law, wastes should be
segregated as compostable, nonrecyclable, recyclable, residual
waste and other classifications.
Compostable wastes or biodegradable wastes are wastes that
can be broken down to nonpoisonous substances through the
natural action of microorganisms.
These include food wastes and
soiled paper and wood. Similarly,
residual wastes are wastes that

are nonbiodegradable, noncompostable and nonrecyclable.
The Environmental Management
Bureau (EMB) said residual wastes
should be disposed of through a longterm disposal facility or sanitary
landfill. Residual wastes, include,
among others, sanitary napkins,
disposable diapers, worn-out rugs,
cartons with plastic lining used for
milk and juice containers, ceramics,
candy wrappers or sachets and other
soiled materials that cannot be composted and recycled.
Meanwhile, recyclable wastes
are waste materials that can still be
converted for beneficial use. Some
of these are newspapers, ferrous
scrap metal, nonferrous scrap metal,
corrugated cardboard, aluminum,
glass, office paper and tin cans.

We do not want the same
situation in Boracay Island to
happen to other vacation sites. LGUs
should be keen in monitoring waste
issues in their areas of jurisdiction.
Segregation activities should be
strictly implemented. Tourists should
also throw their garbage only in
designated trash bins.”—Cimatu

enate President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto prodded
the Duterte administration on
Wednesday to fast-track disposition
of multibillion-peso coco-levy assets
through “a win-win solution” for coconut farmers.
“My proposal is for the government to sell all coco-levy assets, under a process that is transparent and
advantageous to the farmers,” Recto
said, suggesting that “liquidating the
assets will enlarge the trust fund.”
The senator said that the government must “get out of the coconut business because its record
in running for-profit corporations
has been unblemished by success.”
“It has no business bottling cooking oil. If we create a trust committee
that will be allowed to pick investments, run corporations, disburse
funds, then we will merely be copying
what [former President Ferdinand]
E. Marcos did with the CIIF,” Recto
said, referring to the Marcos-era Coconut Industry Investment Fund.
“I want bigger funds for coconut
farmers,” Recto said, noting that
the original proposal is limited to
annual interest on top of a start-up
development fund. “My proposal is
to match trust income with guaranteed appropriated budgetary support
to the Philippine Coconut Authority
(PCA) in the amount of P10 billion.”
Suggesting that “faster and
transparent disposition of the coco-levy will ensure win-win solu-

OFWs to Bello: Lift total
deployment ban to Kuwait
By Recto Mercene
@rectomercene

H

u ndr eds of Kuwa itbound overseas Filipino
workers (OFWs) are appealing to Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III to lift the total deployment of workers to the Middle
Eastern country.
“We are covered by a separate law
on workers to Kuwait and are not
part of the memorandum of understanding [MOU] the Department of
Labor and Employment (DOLE) is
negotiating with Kuwait labor officials,” the OFW group said in a news
statement issued on Wednesday.
Bello has announced on radio
earlier that Kuwait has “informally” accepted the new provisions for additional protection
of Filipino household ser vice
workers (HSW).
He said the DOLE is just waiting
for Kuwaiti labor officials to arrive
this week to finalize the draft agreement, which Bello said he will sign
in Kuwait this month.
The formal signing of the MOU
by Philippine and Kuwait labor
officials may pave the way for
the lifting of the ban of OFWs
to Kuwait.
Thousands of HSWs have lost
their opportunities to work in
Kuwait since the ban was implemented on January 22, even as
their visas have expired, including
their medical certificates, which
are part of the requirements for
the issuance of a work permit from
the Kuwait Embassy.
Hundreds of skilled OFWs who
are affected by the total deployment ban to Kuwait are still appealing to the government to “save
our jobs,” as the ban enters its sixth
week with no relief in sight.
Recruitment consultant and
migration expert Emmanuel S.
Geslani, for his part, urged Bello to
reconsider his decision to continue
the deployment ban to Kuwait,
which includes skilled workers
who appealed to him this week, to
allow them to leave for their waiting jobs in Kuwait.
These skilled workers are oil and
gas engineers, information-tech-

nology professionals, nurses, medical and laboratory technicians,
store mangers, sales personnel,
communication technicians, maintenance personnel electricians,
plumbers and carpenters.
They have been issued visas
and are just awaiting for the issuance of their plane tickets from
their employers.
However since January 22,
when the order was signed by Bello
to stop the processing of overseas
employment certificate for all new
hires for both skilled and HSW,
“the world has stopped for them
for the past month with no solution in sight.”
The skilled workers who were
recruited and processed by licensed
agencies deploying workers to Kuwait have already resigned from
their jobs after being selected for
the jobs in Kuwait.
If the impasse on the deployment ban continues for the next few
months, recruitment agencies fear
that the visas for the skilled workers
will expire, including their medical
results, which have a three-month
validity period.
“Once the visas expire and the
principal does not extend them the
foreign jobs, these jobs will definitely
be lost and workers will be jobless,”
Geslani said.
Employers in Kuwait have also
canceled the visas for other workers and have started to look at other
countries to fill in the demand for
their projects.
Bello said that he was waiting
for the Kuwaiti government to
sign the MOU that seeks to add
more protection guarantees for
HSWs. Skilled OFWs, however,
said that they are covered by the
Kuwait Labor Laws, which are
adequate unlike HSWs, who fall
under a different category under
Kuwait law.
In 2016 around 105,000 OFWs
were deployed to Kuwait, with
57,061 as HSWs, while the skilled
workers filled up the balance
of 105,000
There are 270,000 OFWs in Kuwait, with almost 150,000 HSWs,
and the rest are skilled workers,
mostly in oil—production services.

tions for coco farmers,” Recto said
no one is disputing the need to plow
back the coco-levy collections to the
people, noting that “the divergence
is on how to do it.”
Recto aired a wish to see a quicker
disbursement schedule, which will
disburse bigger amounts in a shorter
time. “If the [coconut] industry is in
ICU, it should get a massive infusion,
not the perpetual drip-drip of funds.
Why prolong the agony of farmers
when we can have a shorter recovery
period for an industry in distress?”
The senator also voiced hopes of
coconut farmers for “a simpler and
more cohesive administration of
the trust fund, by one body dominated by farmers, in which they
will have the biggest say, instead of
creating two layers of bureaucracy,
which will lead to dissonance.”
Recto, in a news statement, also
endorsed the expansion of the
PCA’s membership to nine, “six of
whom will be farmers, and three
from the government, including
the secretaries of agriculture, finance and budget.”
He, likewise, suggested that the
PCA also be given expanded powers
to: ratify and veto the disposition
of coco-levy assets, only when such
is disadvantageous to the government; serve as a trust committee;
and draft the industry road map.
“Why create two agencies, when
one agency can do the job with a
one-stop shop? The powers of the
proposed trust committee can be
included in the strengthened PCA,”
the senator added.

NTC suspends Globe’s
VAS over prepaid
load theft complaint

T

Canned price hike

A shopper checks on the price of competing sardine brands at a Quezon City supermarket early this week. The Department of
Trade Industry has confirmed the request of manufacturers to hike the prices of canned goods from P1 to P2, citing the increase in the price of tin plates and other
raw materials. Nonoy Lacza

Filipino vapers laud US cancer society position on e-cigarettes

V

apers in the Philippines
lauded the latest position
statement of the American Cancer Society (ACS), declaring
the organization’s cautious support
for e-cigarettes as a tool to help individuals quit smoking combustible
tobacco products.
“These individuals should be
encouraged to switch to the least
harmful form of tobacco product
possible; switching to the exclusive
use of e-cigarettes is preferable to
continuing to smoke combustible
products,” according to the ACS position statement.
While cautioning that the health
effects of long-term e-cigarette use
are not known, the ACS noted that
currently available evidence show
that using current-generation ecigarettes is less harmful than
smoking cigarettes.
The ACS said that 98 percent of
all tobacco-related deaths in the US
are caused by cigarette smoking and
acknowledged that the “US tobacco landscape has changed rapidly
in recent years, with millions of
[American] consumers now using
ENDS [electronic nicotine delivery system], the most prominent
of which are e-cigarettes.”
“The ACS position statement is
consistent with the Public Health

England and the Royal College of
Physicians conclusions that e-cigarettes are at least 95-percent less
harmful than conventional cigarettes and are a viable smoking-cessation tool,” said Joey Dulay, president of the Philippine E-Cigarette
Industry Association (Pecia). “We
are hopeful that the Department of
Health [DOH] will look objectively
at the growing body of evidence
and eventually support the use of
e-cigarettes to help the millions of
Filipinos quit smoking.”
Dulay also appealed to legislators
to craft an appropriate regulatory
framework for e-cigarettes that is
different from that of conventional
cigarettes. “Doing so will encourage more Filipino smokers to switch
to less-harmful nicotine products
and quit cigarettes all together.”
“While a cautious endorsement
of e-cigarettes, the ACS position
statement is aligned with the latest
US Food and Drug Administration
policy road map, consensus study
report of the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine, and the conclusions
of Cancer Research UK, all of which
underscore the potential role of
e-cigarettes in reducing smokingrelated harms,” said Tom Pinlac,
president of The Vapers Philip-

pines. “We urge the DOH and local
legislators to look at the evidence
and take decisive steps to include
e-cigarettes in national tobaccocontrol initiatives, a move that can
help save millions of Filipino lives.”
The Vapers Philippines and Pecia expressed, likewise, dismay
over the opposition of the Philippine Cancer Society (PCS) to a
House resolution which urges the
DOH to adopt harm reduction
measures, particularly the use of
e-cigarettes, as an alternative for
smokers as part of the country’s
National Tobacco Control Strategy.
In its position paper, the PCS
stated it “opposes the adoption of
use of e-cigarettes as an alternative to cigarette smoking.” The PCS
criticized the Public Health England
review for not conducting a “conclusive study” to support its conclusion
that e-cigarettes may be contributing to falling smoking rates among
adults and young people in the
United Kingdom.
“The behavioral pattern of using
e-cigarettes is similar to smoking
cigarettes, and the harm it can potentially present to one’s health are
already strong enough reasons to
regulate or prohibit its use just like
any kind of commercial product,” the
PCS position paper stated.

he National Telecommunications Commission (NTC)
has suspended Globe Telecom’s value-added service (VAS)
provider GotDeals Mobile Inc.
in connection with a complaint
of “disappearing” mobile-phone
load credits.
In the summons issued on February 28 by lawyer Ella Blanca Lopez, officer in charge of the NTC
legal branch, both GotDeals and
Globe have been summoned to appear in a hearing before the regulatory body on March 8 to determine
possible violation of Memorandum
Circular 04-07-2009, which governs Public Telecommunications
Entities and VAS providers.
VAS providers offer services
outside the standard calls and
SMS, such as ringtones, wallpapers
and infotext, among others.
“Upon receipt of this order,
Globe Telecom Inc. is, likewise,
hereby directed to immediately
suspend the implementation of
its content-provider agreement
with GotDeals Mobile Inc., pending investigation of this complaint pursuant to NTC Memorandum Circular 04-07-2009,”
Lopez wrote to the telecom giant
and GotDeals.
NTC’s suspension order was
triggered by a complaint filed
by Feann Hontinveros Mauricio,
whose social-media post on “nakaw
load” has caught the attention of
netizens who have similarly experienced unauthorized deduction
from their prepaid load credit.
It has since been investigated
by the NTC to pinpoint the source
and cause of disappearing cellphone load.
Prepaid subscribers complain
that their load credits disappear
due to their supposed “subscription” to certain services of the VAS
provider even without their knowledge or authorization.
In last Monday’s public hearing in the Senate, there was an
agreement to review Memorandum Circular 04-07-2009 in order
to address such complaints and
strengthen the protection of consumers against nakaw load.

Agriculture/Commodities
BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Jennifer A. Ng • Thursday, March 8, 2018

A5

House wants to develop ‘malunggay’ industry

T

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
@joveemarie

he House Committee
on Agriculture and Food
approved a substitute bill
seeking to develop and strengthen
the malunggay industry in the
Philippines due to its benefits to
public health.

The substitute bill seeks to
promote the production, processing, marketing and distribution
of Moringa oleifera, or malunggay.
It also mandates the Department of Agriculture (DA) to formulate a five-year development
framework for the implementation of plans, projects and programs for the production, marketing, processing and distribution
of malunggay for food, medicinal
and commercial needs.
Deputy Speaker Linabelle Ruth
R. Villarica of the Fourth District
of Quezon City, one of the authors
of the bill, said now is the time
for the government to intervene
and develop the moringa industry, given the many benefits of
malunggay.
“Studies have shown that 100
grams of moringa leaves contain
nine times the protein of yogurt,
10 times the vitamin A of carrots, 15 times the potassium of
bananas, 17 times the calcium of
milk and 12 times the vitamin C

of oranges,” she said.
“Malunggay is one of the world’s
most useful crops and is a tropical tree with multifarious uses,”
Villarica added.
According to Villarica, the numerous uses of malunggay together
with its easy propagation, have
increased international interest
in the crop.
Currently, she said, cultivation
of large scale is seen in India, Israel,
Thailand, Southeast Asian countries, Africa and Pacific Islands.
One of the principal authors of
the bill, Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Second District of Pampanga said the measure will develop a “vibrant and viable” malunggay-based agro-industries that
will support the agri-industrialization initiatives of the Duterte
administration and address the
nutritional deficiency problems
common in the countryside and
urban slums.
“It can increase multifarious
and varied on-farm, off-farm

and nonfarm enterprise incomes;
generate millions of jobs; utilize
vast tracts of idle agricultural
lands and urban spaces; make the
Philippines globally competitive;
impact local and international
market; and help attain food security and safety, poverty reduction and socioeconomic equity,”
Arroyo said.
The lawmaker is pushing for a
budget of at least P100 million with
an incremental increase of P10 million per year for the development of
the malunggay industry, which shall
be included in the General Appropriations Act.
Deputy Speaker Sharon S. Garin
of Aambis-OWA, another author of
the bill, said it is time for malunggay
to take the forefront because it is
considered a “superfood.”
“Internationally, malunggay
is getting more accepted. It is
endemic to the Philippines, so
we won’t need any complicated
technology.”
Also, Party-list Rep. Emmeline
Aglipay-Villar of Diwa, an author
of the bill, said the measure seeks
to establish a national program for
the malunggay industry.
Aglipay-Villar said that, while
at present malunggay is an underutilized resource in the country, it
is clear it would be to the benefit
of the Filipino people if the plant
and its industry were given more
attention and support.
“Not only because of the health
benefits malunggay brings but
the economic ones, as well. It
is clear that as more and more
uses of malunggay are discovered,
the demand for it will increase,”
she said.

MARKET BOUND

After harvesting his pechay crops, a farmer in Santiago City, Isabela, puts them into a plastic bag to transport to
the market. Organically grown vegetables in the area command better prices. LEONARDO PERANTE II

ganda , t h e w o r l d ’s
fou r t h-big gest va n i l l a
exporter, is boosting output to benefit from prices for
the flavoring that’s more valuable than silver and have forced
growers to hire armed guards to
deter thieves.
The landlocked East African
nation will produce about 100
metric tons this year, with potential to double that in future,
according to Aust & Hachmann
Canada Ltd., the world’s oldest
vanilla company. While that’s far
below the 1,600 tons top-grower
Madagascar can produce, extra
Ugandan output would diversify
global supplies and see farmers
of some of the world ’s potentially best beans reap as much as
$600,000 per ton, company director David van der Walde said.
“Vanilla is an important crop
and the government is promoting
its quality and boosting security
in growing areas,” said Opolot
Okasai, director of crop resources
at Uganda’s Agriculture Ministry.
The Uganda Export Promotion
Board says annual vanilla shipments ranged from 0.65 tons to
75.4 tons in the half-decade to
2016, the last year for which data
is available.
Extra agr icultura l revenue
would be a boon for Uganda, already Africa’s top coffee exporter,
as it struggles to reach its 2020
target of middle-income status,
which needs per-capita income
of between $1,045 and $12,736.
A delay in starting oil production
in the country’s west is affecting
the government’s economic targets, the planning authority said
in February. Agriculture makes
up about a quarter of Uganda’s
$24.1-billion economy.

Cyclone spike

An extra source for the beans that
flavor everything from lattes to
ice creams would also ease buyers’

BLOOMBERG

near-reliance on a single location.
Last year’s cyclone in Madagascar, which contributes as much
as 80 percent of the world’s supply, curbed production there and
added to the price spike. Papua
New Guinea is the second-biggest
grower at 200 to 250 tons, while Indonesia produces about 150 tons,
according to Aust & Hachmann’s
November report.
“When all the conditions are
right, Ugandan vanilla can be
outstanding,” said Van der Walde,
whose company has historically
been one of the biggest buyers of
Ugandan vanilla. Prices spiked in
the early 2000s, causing buyers to
use more synthetic flavors. The
market collapsed as a result, with
vanilla trading at $30 to $80 per
kilogram in 2004 to 2014, leading
to farmers curbing production.
Prices have soared since 2015,
largely on new demand from
major food companies responding to a consumer preference for
natural ingredients. In Uganda
some farmers responded by picking the beans too early, hurting
yields and quality, according to
Van der Walde.

“One of the great sadnesses for
me is they haven’t taken advantage of the recent high prices,”
he said. “That’s the jackpot and
Uganda was totally unable to take
advantage of it. It’s coming now,
but it’s late.”

Bows and arrows

Ugandan vani l la is ma in ly
grown in the central region and
the western Kasese and Bundibugyo districts bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo. Okasai
said it’s gaining prominence as a
“major export-revenue earner,”
and the government is moving
to destroy prematurely harvested
crops and advise farmers.
Security’s the main worry for
Peter Lutalo, a farmer in Nkokonjeru, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of the capital, Kampala.
He says other growers have hired
guards equipped with guns, bows
and arrows and machetes to protect their vanilla.
“If you don’t watch over your
farm at night, thieves will exploit t he l a x it y a nd h a r vest
you r c ro p,” t he 3 4 -ye a r - old
said. Bloomberg News

spent one weekend observing (aspiring and existing)
farmers testing a soil’s suitability for planting cacao trees.
Observing farmers using test
tubes, litmus paper, sample soil
and a soil-testing kit from the
Bureau of Soils and Water Management reminded me of my
high-school chemistry class and
the fact that there’s a lot more
involved in food production than
picking up that bag of organic
lettuce in the weekend market.
Despite the advent of so-called
soil-less farming, such as hydroponics, most of the crops that the
farmers raised will come from
one source: the soil.
And that is why I decided
to sit in Cocoa Foundation of
the Philippines’s class on cacao
farming. If I want to go deeper into sustainable farming, I
have to go back to its foundation—fertile soil that can yield
enough food for the present
and future generations. Or, as
what the instructor said at the
start of the class, you need to
have healthy soil if you want
healthy plants.
So I learned that one has to
maintain the soil’s pH balance
(neither too acidic nor too alkaline) and that soil needs nutrients like nitrogen and potassium; that you need lime to reduce
the acidity and compost to lessen
its alkaline level; that a fertile
soil is well aerated (buhaghag)
and has the capacity to absorb
water; that insects are not necessarily bad for the farm and also
that any farmer—or gardener—
needs to understand the biodiversity in the farm to know how
each and every plant, animal and
insects interconnect and keep
the ecosystem alive; that those
eggshells my tita used to put in
her cactus is not an affectation
but a way to infuse more calcium
in the soil. Others use crushed
seashells and in some parts of
Tagaytay even crushed bulalo
bones as a calcium-enriched soil
ensures that trees and plants will
remain sturdy.
I also started to understand
why organic farming takes up
so much time and energy, as one
can’t just douse the soil with

Prime Sarmiento

prime commodities
pesticides and fertilizer and be
done with it. I also have much respect now for those who choose
to veer away from conventional
farming, as they understand how
valuable soil is. By taking this to
account, I can say that it’s just
fair to pay a premium for organic
vegetables. Never mind the debate on whether or not organic
vegetables have more nutrients
than those that were conventionally produced. The higher
price that you pay is to keep the
soil fertile.
Soil is a nonrenewable resource. Once it’s destroyed, it’s
gone for good. The Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO)
said 12 million hectares of agricultural soils are lost globally
through soil degradation every
year. Increased crop production
has reduced global hunger, but it
came with a steep environmental cost—about 33 percent of
the world’s soils are now moderately to highly degraded. This
is the time for soil conservation, as while intensified farming might produce a lot of food,
this is just good for a short period of time. A long-term solution is needed to achieve global
food security.
The FAO is promoting agroecology—a farming system that
takes into account the farmers
“deep, experiential knowledge
of their local soils.”
“Agroecolog y encompasses
multiple dimensions of the food
system, including ecolog ica l
restoration, political and social
stability and economic sustainability,” the FAO said.
One of these agroecological
strategies is the Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT)
in which annual and perennial
crops are grown between contoured rows of leguminous species. The FAO said SALT has
been extensively tested and
implemented in Southeast Asia
and has proven to be effective
in reversing soil degradation,
increase production and raise
farmers’ incomes.
Other agroecological strate-

gies include the use of cover crops
like legumes to fix the soil’s nitrogen content; integrating livestock with crop production with
crop by-products used as livestock feed, while animal manure
is applied to fertilize farmlands;
and intercropping to strengthen
resistance to pests and diseases.
nnn
Today is International Women’s
Day and I wish to celebrate it
by paying homage to all women
farmers—the ones who keep our
soil productive and put food in
our table. Women account for
more than 40 percent of the
agricultural labor force and yet
several studies have shown that
their contribution to food production is often ignored.
In the Philippines the FAO
said that from 1999 to 2003,
most women farmers are involved in planting/transplanting, manual weeding, caring and
harvesting of palay. Most women
farmworkers were hired to plant
and harvest corn and to apply
fertilizer on sugarcane plants.
“Women’s actual contribution to food production and
rural economy remains undervalued, if not invisible. As a result, women have less access to
productive resources than men
do. Access to land, technology,
extension services, capital and
inf rastr ucture suppor t tend
to favor rural men,” the FAO
said in a 2003 report.
More than a decade later, the
agr iculture sector continues
to favor the men over women.
It’s usually male farmers who
legally own the land and male
farmworkers get higher wages
than women. According to the
Philippine Statistics Authority,
male farmworkers get P193.22
per day, while that of the females
averaged P181.10 per day.
But a study, led by National
University of Singapore’s Assistant Dean Sonia Akter, and published in the Food Policy journal
in 2017, offered hope that things
can change for women farmers—
in the Philippines at least.
The study, which involved a
field work in Infanta, Quezon,
revealed that, while agricultural
land is formally owned by men,
both the men and women have
joint decision-making power
over land use and farm credit.
It’s also the wife who manages
t he household f inances and
decides on the sale of crops
and livestock.

A6

TheBroa

Business

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Tawi-Tawi: A beautiful pe
N

By Roger Pe

O fear. That’s what can be
said of my views on the
southwestern Philippines,
much more the Sulu island groups.
I rarely believe the bad rep these
islands get.

TAWI-TAWI’S Sacred Mountain, Bud Bongao

MAYOR Jimuel Que, perhaps the youngest
mayor in the Philippines

These stories are like ancient
tales retold and rewoven by people
who have not even been there, not
seen the real picture and heard
only “horror stories” from third
party sources. Not only have they
failed miserably to update old data
on Tawi-Tawi but continue to use
these to support biases.
What’s also annoying is the
tone of articles about Tawi-Tawi
that portray the islands as a lair of
bandits and its people as pirates.
Some of these articles are based on
information that is unreliable or
came from people who may have
gone to Tawi-Tawi years ago but
haven’t acknowledged that situations have changed. These articles
scare the hell out of innocent travelers.
Last year, around one million
people visited Tawi-Tawi yet a few
still ask if it is safe to travel there.
The night I mulled over accepting an invitation to go to TawiTawi brought me to the eve of my
first trip to New York City. My
friends had bled my ears to death
from unsolicited advice on how not
get mugged in Manhattan—“Don’t
stare at people;” “Never walk alone
in Central Park,” etc., etc. All these
“tips” turned out not to be true as
with other pieces of advice I got before I went to several European cities after tasting a bit of life in the
Big Apple.

The Adman cometh

I HAVE always been adventurous.
I stretch my boundaries at some
point. I guess my being an adman
made me that way; that the only
way to find the truth is being actually there in the marketplace to be
able to write truthfully.
I am referring to misconceptions about Sulu islands, the
“hot spot” much maligned by bad
press.
Still, my views should not be
considered Gospel truth. I forward
the view that some can interpret
information differently by seeing
people and situations in a positive
light.
With that principle, I accepted the invitation to travel to the
southwestern Philippines even if
we were only four (two travel bloggers, a cameraman and myself).
Usually, the regular entourage I
travel with are composed of seven
to ten people. I presumed the others had backed out or chose not to
go. The lesser, the better (and quieter), I thought the day I waited for
my flight.
What’s probably on the mind
of the no-go people is the negative
connotation associated with TawiTawi.
But I could tell them right now

that Tawi-Tawi is the safest province within the Basilan-Sulu-TawiTawi archipelago. Pirates do not
exist there because there is a naval
base stationed in Panglima Sugala.
The Philippine Coast Guard regularly patrols the shores, too.

Smooth as silk

THE almost two-hour late afternoon flight to Zamboanga (where
we would spend the night) was
surprisingly smooth as silk, to use
a foreign airline’s tagline.
After a quick check-in at Garden Orchid Hotel, we were brought
to the Alavar Restaurant for the
obligatory “Curacha” dinner.
The chi-chi members of
Davao media were already comfortably seated when we got
there. Their bandwidth frequency
ran high as they dominated the
dining chitchat airwaves. As in
most media familiarity tours I’ve
been to, no one introduced them
to us, and us, to them, so we ended up gingerly, cautiously guessing who they were.
We were then told that our
wake-up call would be at 5 a.m.,
which meant we should sleep early
and all power bank batteries must
be fully charged to the last bar.
Like all my first nights in a new
place, I would not be able to sleep
and, much to my abomination, I
had asthma, aggravated by a room
reeking with chest-piercing scent
of cigarette smoke.

Day one

I WOKE up at 3 a.m., ready for our
much-awaited flight to Tawi-Tawi.
While counting sheep, I had
mentally reviewed Sulu’s geography: which islets and island provinces we will be flying over. The
thrill of hovering above them gave
me goosebumps.
I also loved the fact our plane
will be within striking distance
to Borneo (Sabah) when we get to
Sitangkai and Sibutu, islands that
have always mystified me.
It was drizzling when we arrived in Zamboanga airport. I was
expecting some turbulence across
the Sulu Seas when the plane took
off. But that did not happen.
The only thing that disturbed
me was when we were already descending to Bongao, Tawi-Tawi’s
capital town.
As we were approaching
Sanga-Sanga airport, the plane
abruptly maneuvered up and the
pilot announced: “We apologize for
the inconvenience but we will attempt to land for the second time
because of poor visibility.”
Another fifteen minutes of
circling the island, we were able to
land.

Hello, Tawi-Tawi

AMERICAN documentary and
travel photographer Jacob Maentz
describes the Sulu Sea in his website as “one of the most beautiful
seascapes on earth.”
I echo Maentz’s statement.
Despite its reputation, the entire strings of islands look like an
untouched tropical paradise with a
huge tourism potential. From the
air, every single islet is ringed with
white sand: What a sight to behold!
As soon as we had set foot in
Tawi-Tawi, I had thought I would
be seeing a different country but
no, it was just like another Philippine town, except for beautiful
mosques, Islamic influences on
house structures and the sound of
the ‘kulintang’ gently thumping
our ears with a warm welcome.
From the airport, we rolled
through Bongao’s concrete roads
and passed through the historic Ridjiki (“blessing”) boulevard, built
near the big expanse of Sulu and
Celebes seas.
We saw children jumping and
swimming into its turquoise blue
waters. We saw young men and
women chatting on the sea wall.
Had we came late in the afternoon
on that day, we would have seen a
gloriously spectacular sunset.
The seaport has served the local populace for hundreds of years,
a docking place for motored ferry
boats from the municipalities of
Sitangkai, Sibutu, Simunul, SapaSapa, Tandubas, Languyan, South
Ubian, Mapun, Turtle Island and
other far-flung islands.

Oldest mosque

AS we went past Ridjiki, a black
mountain standing in solitude
beckoned on the horizon. It was a
mini-version of Australia’s Uluru
Ayers Rock towering 342 meters
above sea level amidst the flat island of Bongao.
We were heading to Simunul,
an island town where one could see
the country’s oldest mosque. Tour
guide Tony Said brought us to a
seaport where we would take our
speedboat.
Nearby is the White Mosque,
located in Barangay Tubig Tanah.
Sitting quietly on a manicured carpet of grass, the mosque gleams
against a backdrop of coconut
trees; adjacent to the house of
Tawi-Tawi’s provincial governor.
It was a quick ride to Simunul.
The island has an attention-getting
port entrance because of a big replica of a Koran on top of its archway. Crystal-clear blue waters,
clean streets, symmetrical houses
on stilts, the entire island was picture-perfect.
We walked around the island
and we saw Sheik Karim al Mak-

PANAMPANGAN, Philippines’ longest sandbar

SIMUNUL Island, site of the oldest mosque in the Philippines

dum Mosque, the oldest mosque
in the country. Declared a national cultural treasure, it was visited
by the late President Ferdinand
Marcos in 1965.
The newly renovated mosque
still stands on its original site that
was built in 1380. Inside, the four
original giant pillars (made from
Philippine Iron tree, ipil) are encased in gilded iron railings.
We then moved to Poblacion Tampakan where we saw a
monster of a crocodile measuring
nineteen feet long and four feet
wide on its tummy. Caught by Barangay Sukabulan fishermen, the
beast has become an unusual attraction in Simunul.

Longest sandbar

IT was now time to visit the longest sandbar in the Philippines:
Panampangan, a spectacular work
of nature that measures three kilometers from end-to-end forming the shape of a crescent moon.
The extraordinary sandbar is
gifted with soft, silky, powdery
white sand that could be ranked
as one of the best in the world.
Along the way are sea vehicles
called Bintang boats.

“They come and go,” our tour
guide said. “They are culturally
Malay but have assimilated with
the Badjao culture and daily life.”
There were also inter-island
Ferry boats that are loaded with
passengers among who are men in
military uniforms. Each time they
went past us, they reminded me
what our Zamboanga tour guide
Errold Bayona said.
“When you meet them along
the way, raise your hand and wave
back,” Bayona had advised.
There was also a Muslim Wedding boat.
One would know they are
rushing to an island nearby for a
wedding ceremony because of one
thing: a malong (traditional Muslim tube skirt) flying in the wind,
like a flag planted near the boat’s
prow.
There were also flocks of wild
sea gulls a number of which routinely swoop down the water surface to catch flying fishes.
More birds appeared on the
horizon as our boat reached Panampangan.
The hardly visited island is
now getting visitors and more are
trickling in. Wrong perceptions

STUNNING white beach on Mapun Island

aderLook
earl in Sulu’s waterworld

sMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph | Thursday, March 8, 2018

A7

basic needs are not addressed.
“Many of our islands don’t
have rivers to supply the water
needs of our people,” he added.
“Electrification is also a problem.”
Still, he is thankful the Regional Board of Investments of
the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (RBOI-ARMM) has
approved an 8-megawatt capacity
diesel power plant project in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi.
“For a region where residents
miserably experience daily rotational brownouts due to power
shortage, this is great news,” Que
said. The whole of Sulu archipelago,
including Tawi-Tawi, is the least
penetrated market for power projects.
Que also reiterated his mayorship would continue implementing
an efficient waste disposable management in the town, make its seas
and beaches trash-free and encourage people to be more environmentally conscious.

Economic zone

WHITE Mosque in Bongao

was sweating profusely. “No turning back now,” I said, in an effort to
establish a personal record: book
my first real mountain climb.

Sacred mountain

have unfairly hounded many stunningly beautiful places in TawiTawi for decades, but the truth is,
it is safe and heavily guarded by
Philippine Navy, Marines and five
Badjao families that live in the island.

Highest view deck

ONE can call this mountain a masterpiece of nature.
Bud (meaning “mountain”)
has vertical limestone rocks and
verdant moist forest. The mountain has six limestone pillars that
form six of its peaks. They have
viewing decks named after Bongao, Pajar, Sibutu (the summit), Simunul, Tambisan and Tinondakan.
We climbed a 3,608-step
cobblestone trail and reached the
highest view deck on Tambisan
Peak in less than hour. The magnificent view at the top unraveled
the coast of Sabah accentuated by
a solitary eagle soaring above the
deep blue sea. The summit gave us
an almost 360-degree view of the
Celebes Sea.
Before ascending, we were
told not to bring plastic bottles.
But we could bring bananas to feed
schools of Macaques (monkeys)
that populate the entire mountain.
Barely a quarter of the total height,
two of our companions returned to
the foot of the mountain.
Halfway through, I wanted to
stop and just sit on one of the rest
huts. My inner self said “No” even
if my chest was tightening and
knees were wobbling.
My shirt was now all wet as I

ALONG the way, we would occasionally meet a family with a young
boy or girl in tow.
It was explained to us that it’s a
Bongao tradition, a sign of respect
to bring young ones to a royal Muslim burial site above the mountain.
It is also a practice to request for
the sick to get cured. A hike is also
a sign of penitence, the mountain
being a holy ground for Muslims.
By this time, the forest monkeys have started to come down.
I immediately saw one throwing
his full body weight to branches of
trees. Some would walk along the
trail and glide through railings.
I was able to capture one on
video but as I got closer, he began
to open his mouth wide open revealing his sharp fangs. Fearing he
would jump at me and I would be
off-balanced and—horrors—fall
off the cliff, I backed off.
Said, our tireless tour guide,
told us there is an Imam (Muslim
priest) on the site. One can leave
a donation and the Imam will
pray for you. Mountain trekkers
can also make a wish by hurling
pebbles towards the ravine. They
say that if it hits the rock, his wish
would come true.
As it was almost five in the afternoon, we readied ourselves to
come down. The race was on, who
will reach the foot of the mountain
first? I did, though my knees were
hurting badly and my leg calves
ached like hell.

Bud Bongao trail

THE Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) spent P56
million in developing the Bud Bongao Trail.
The construction of an access
road to Bongao Peak was the first
eco-tourism park project developed by the regional government.
It included construction of a tourist center where visitors can register and receive orientation before
climbing. The fund also was used
to build 750 steps made of concrete
and railings for construction of
resting sheds.
Bongao Peak is one of the 12
key biodiversity sites in the country protected under the “New Conservation Areas in the Philippines
Project” of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Around 1,500 tourists visit the
peak every week.
To increase visitor arrival in
the town, Bongao Mayor Jimuel
S. Que said the local government
would help sustain and maintain
Bud Bongao and will also conduct
activities that will further promote
tourism in the municipality.
Que said his governance would
see further development of more
community-based tourism that
will also focus on local culture.

A feast of seafood

WE barely had time to freshen up
when we arrived at the Que’s house
for the dinner the mayor graciously
hosted.
The boyish-looking Que gave
us a sumptuous feast of the freshest seafood we’ve ever tasted—
huge crabs, succulent white clam
soup, “Samaral,” broiled squid and,
the winner of the night, Mantis
Shrimp (alupihang dagat). The latter
won because it tasted so good like
lobster and oozed with roe from
end to end.
It was also a time to interview
the mayor who gamely answered
courteous and no-holds-barred
questions. Que said he is hopeful
about the positive buzz Tawi-Tawi
is getting today.
“We want to start slow, we
don’t want to rush things,” he added. “We want to fix peace and order
in the community first.”
Speaking of peace and order,
Que said Bongao is one of the most
peaceful towns in Sulu.
“We used to only have one
battalion of soldiers; now we have
three. And the local government
units [LGUs] are cooperating. We
want to maintain peace and order
here. “Ayaw naming masira ’yon [We
don’t want to ruin it],” he said.

Big potential

ARMM Tourism Secretary Ayesha
Dilangalen sees the big potential of
Tawi-Tawi as a tourist destination.
Dilangalen said the establishment of a tourism council and the
creation of an association of hoteliers and restaurants in the province have helped boost tourism in
Tawi-Tawi.
Bongao alone has 300 hotel
and pension house rooms for tourists. Still, Dilangalen is hoping that
more hoteliers will invest in the
province.
But in order for tourism to
thrive, electricity, water and communication must flow unceasingly.
Que laments that some of Bongao’s

TOURISM Secretary Wanda T. Teo
shared her hopes for Tawi-Tawi
during an interagency dialogue on
the Zamboanga-Sandakan Air connectivity and Tawi-Tawi Freeport
and Ecozone Project in Zamboanga
City on February 26.
Teo spoke as chairman of the
Tourism Cluster of the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East
Asean Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga).
She said only Mindanao and Palawan are not connected by air and
sea to the other three countries.
She is optimistic that with the
upcoming cruise tourism in Buliluyan, Bataraza, Palawan and Kudat, Malaysia, “we can now be truly
connected with the BIMP-Eaga.”
Teo also said the Philippines
would be aggressively promoting
Mindanao through the “Go South
Philippines” campaign of the Department of Tourism (DOT).
“We believe in the vast offerings of the island, including
ARMM, specifically, Tawi-Tawi.
With its beautiful beaches and its
location as a natural gateway, there
is vast potential for the island,” she
said. “Thus, the proposal to develop
the Tawi-Tawi Integrated Seaport
and Economic Zone will prove to be
a worthwhile [contribution to tourism].”

Go South

TEO said the DOT is tapping the
younger generation of travelers
to see the countryside with the
campaign, zeroing in on the entire
Mindanao island for the first quarter of 2018, beginning with Davao
and to other Mindanao regions in
the following months.
“Go South” will be our new
message and tone for Mindanao,”
Teo said.
The DOT is reviving this highly successful marketing campaign
to give Mindanao a stronger and
unified voice as a “single tourism
destination”. Among its lofty objectives is to position Mindanao by
spotlighting its world-renowned
attractions, like the Unesco World
Heritage sites of Mount Hamiguitan, Mount Apo and Mount Kitanglad.
As part of our efforts to improve the tourism experience of
our country’s Asean neighbors, Teo
said the DOT has initiated “Muslim Friendly Tourism to cater to
specific needs of our brethren of
the Islamic faith.”
Teo added there is much to see
in Mindanao.
“As we launch our “Go South”
campaign, we will showcase the
“Land of Promise” in a new light of
fun, adventure and pleasant memories,” she said. “With the launch of
these routes, we are taking the first
step and we firmly believe that we,
as a united front, will sustain what
we have started.”

Banking&Finance

A8 Thursday, March 8, 2018 • Editor: Jun B. Vallecera

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

DBM eyes system to monitor govt projects

T

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

@BNicolasBM

he Department of Budget and
Management (DBM) announced
on Wednesday that it will adopt the
Department of Science and Technology
(DOST)-developed system for DBM
monitoring of government projects to speed
up implementation and reduce wastage.

Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno
said through this technology, dubbed
as Project DIME or Digital Imaging for
Monitoring and Evaluation, they will be
able to track the speed of implementation
and actual physical accomplishments of
government projects in real time and do
away with ghost projects.

“Now, with this technology, we will
know what is really happening with those
projects and we gain a lot by doing away
with ghost projects,” he said, noting that
this is the “most cost-effective way” of
monitoring government projects.
The technologies on data acquisition
developed and acquired by the DOST that

will be used in the program include light
detection and ranging (Lidar), open roads
platform and geostore and geotagging.
Satellites and drones will also be used in
the program to cover areas that cannot
be monitored through Lidar.
The satellites can cover larger areas
than Lidar and can capture imageries of
changes on the surface of the Earth and
will be best used to monitor physical infrastructure projects, such as roads, buildings and bridges. Drones have a smaller
area coverage than Lidar.
The DBM has also identified priority
programs to be monitored in coordination
with different budget and management
bureaus, giving emphasis on top spending
agencies like the departments of Public
Works and Highways (DPWH), Education
(DepEd), Health (DOH) and Transportation (DOTr) for its “Build, Build, Build”
infrastructure program.
Under the Build, Build, Build program,
75 flagship infrastructure projects will
be rolled out. Public spending on infrastructure projects is seen reaching P8

DOF approves four climate-change projects
T

he People’s Survival Fund (PSF) Board on
Wednesday signed a financing agreement
with local government units (LGUs) for
the implementation of four projects in various
areas nationwide amounting to P191.7 million.
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III,
chairman of the PSF Board, signed four grant
agreements to be implemented starting this year,
namely: the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Response as an Adaptation Mechanism
to Resiliency in Lanuza, Surigao del Sur; the Siargao Climate Field School for Farmers and Fisherfolk in the Municipality of Del Carmen, Siargao
Islands, Surigao del Norte; Building Resilience
through Community-based Ecological Farming
in San Francisco, Camotes Islands; and Promoting Resiliency and Climate-Informed Gerona in
Gerona, Tarlac.
The PSF funding, in the form of grant for the
four projects, will have counterpart funding from
the LGUs amounting to P41 million. The four
projects are worth a combined P232.8 million.
​“ The PSF was set up to help improve the ability of our communities to cope with the conse-

quences of climate change. Although the fund
may not be enough to meet all our needs, it is
an initiative to help reduce disaster risks and
improve the resilience of our communities,”
Dominguez said.
Broken down, the Disaster Risk Reduction
and Management Response as an Adaptation
Mechanism to Resiliency will take P39 million
from the PSF funding; the Siargao Climate Field
School for Farmers and Fisherfolk was allotted P80.7 million; Building Resilience through
Community-based Ecological Farming was provided P33.8 million; and Promoting Resiliency
and Climate-Informed Gerona was funded P38.1
million.
National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon, the
PSF Board’s alternate chairman, said there are
nine additional projects for financing under
the PSF pipeline with a requested amount of
P979.7 million.
These include Establishing Climate Smart
Barangays in Los Baños, Laguna, with a requested funding of P24 million; the Carranglan
three-in-one protection project in Carranglan,

nsular Life Executive Chairman Nina D. Aguas announced the appointment of Raoul Antonio E. Littaua
as the company’s new senior executive vice president
and chief agency distribution officer.
Littaua brings with him close to 30 years of extensive
experience in life-insurance operations, including benefits administration, underwriting, customer service,
policy administration and training; agency management
and marketing. He occupied various key positions, such
as chief marketing officer and chief distribution officer
of other life-insurance companies. He spearheaded and
conceptualized various sales and marketing campaigns,
and grew both the agency and bancassurance businesses

of his former companies, strengthening their market
performance.
Aside from the life-insurance industry, he was also
formerly connected with retail and real-estate companies
where he was instrumental for setting the directions for
and growing their respective businesses. Littaua is also a
strong advocate of renewable energy, having worked as technical consultant for foreign-assisted and special projects of
the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
He graduated with an AB Psychology degree from De La
Salle University and attended the Executive Development
Course of the Life Office Management Association/Life
Insurance and Market Research Association.
Littaua

Associations and tourism: Redux

I

am bringing back (hence the word,
redux) but updating my January 4,
2017, column as my organization, the
Philippine Council of Associations and
Association Executives (PCAAE), recently
forged a collaboration with the Tourism
Promotions Board (TPB) to further boost
MICE tourism in the Philippines. MICE
stands for meetings, incentives, conferences and events.
The PCAAE is the country’s “association of associations.” We signed a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Tourism’s marketing arm mandated to promote the country as a major
MICE destination in Asia. Associations
organize MICE, and this is why they have
been contributing to the economy, and the
trend is going to continue in the coming
years, according to reports.
With a high value-added component,
MICE has spawned, among others, infrastructure and enterprise development. It
has also created jobs, established small
and medium enterprise linkages, and
boosted the tax revenues of the government. Therefore, the role of associations
in tourism cannot be discounted.
According to the International Congress and Convention Association’s (ICCA)
Statistic Report 2015, the world association market covers a wide range of meeting types and categories, such as medical
meetings (the largest segment), scientific,

Association World
Octavio Peralta
academic, trade organizations, professional bodies and other social groupings.
The ICCA association database now
includes 20,000 regular meeting series,
220,000 meeting editions and 11,500 international associations. These numbers
confirm the consistent growth in the association meetings market, as identified
in ICCA’s 50-year report.
In the Philippines, the TPB said the
contribution of MICE to the national
tourism industry is about 15 percent. In
2016 there were around 200 MICE events
that the TPB booked, with the Philippines
ranking sixth in the Asean with the most
number of MICE events.
The TPB realized early on the value of
MICE in tourism promotion and foresaw
this trend worldwide, particularly in relation with associations. It was logical for
the TPB leadership to help in the founding
of the PCAAE in November 2013.
Since its inception, the PC A A E
has helped advance the association

management profession and believes
that, by further professionalizing association governance and management,
associations and other membership organizations will have the confidence and
skill set to undertake more MICE events
locally, as well as attract international
conferences to the country.
The PCAAE counts among its members
240 associations, professional societies,
chambers, foundations and other member-serving organizations (cooperatives,
LGU associations, student councils, etc.),
which has a reach of 5 million individual
members that can potentially grow the
MICE industry.
The growth potential of MICE tourism in the country is enormous. What is
needed now is for all tourism stakeholders (government, the business sector and
associations) to join hands to pursue this
opportunity. This is the very essence of
the TPB-PCAAE partnership.
Octavio “Bobby” Peralta is concurrently
the secretary-general of the Association of
Development Financing Institutions in Asia
and the Pacific (ADFIAP) and CEO & Founder of the Philippine Council of Associations
and Association Executives. PCAAE enjoys
the support of ADFIAP, the Tourism Promotions Board, and the Philippine International
Convention Center.
E-mail: obp@adfiap.org.

trillion to P9 trillion from 2017 to 2022.
The acceleration of infrastructure and
development of industries is expected to
yield robust economic growth, create jobs
and uplift the lives of Filipinos.
The DBM also selected the following
programs and projects to be monitored
through Project DIME: the DPWH’s construction/improvement of access roads
leading to seaports and airports; the
DOTr’s North-South Commuter Railway (PNR-North); Department of Social
Welfare and Development’s conditional
cash-transfer program; the DepEd’s basic education facilities; the Commission
on Higher Education’s universal access to
quality tertiary education; the Department of National Defense’s Armed Forces
of the Philippines’s Modernization Program; the Department of the Interior and
Local Government’s Local Governance
Performance Management Program, the
Department of Agriculture’s (DA) Agricultural Machinery, Equipment, Facilities
and Infrastructures Program; the Department of Information and Communica-

tions Technology’s Free Wi-Fi Internet
Access; and the DA-Bureau of Fisheries
and Aquatic Resources’s National Fisheries Program.
They will also continue monitoring
the DOH’s Health Facilities Enhancement
Program; the Department of Environment
and Natural Resources’s National Greening Program; and the National Irrigation
Administration’s National/Communal
Irrigation Systems, which they initially
monitored as sample projects in 2017.
Other projects will be added to the
monitoring list in the future, such as
those being implemented in disasterprone areas.
Findings from the monitoring period
in 2017 allowed the DBM to evaluate the
status of projects and to come up with a
recommendation to continue or discontinue the funding of a project and other
actions for the project’s improvement.
“Project DIME will help ensure that
every peso allocated to government programs and projects will be used efficiently
and effectively,” Diokno said.

Grant Thornton Global CEO:
‘Culture is business strategy’

I

n an era of disruption and uncertainty, corporate culture—and not
technology—will make or break companies and organizations, said the head of
one of the world’s biggest auditing firms.
While many companies are starting to
invest in artificial intelligence and highlevel technologies that can replace routine tasks, the main differentiator among
companies will still be their people and
“how you train people and develop the
leadership that’s going to take people
through the change,” said Peter Bodin,
global CEO of Grant Thornton International (GTI), who was recently in Manila
for the 30th anniversary of P&A Grant
Thornton, its Philippine member-firm
and currently one of the top 5 auditing
firms in the country.
Before assuming his role as global CEO
of GTI on January 1, Bodin led Grant
Thornton Sweden for 16 years, during which the Swedish firm’s revenues
more than trebled. GTI is one of the five
most prestigious accounting firms in the
world with 50,000 people across over
130 countries.
Seeing business models transform in
the last five to 10 years, he said no one
still knows exactly how digital transformation will disrupt businesses. Thus,
the real game changer will be the kind
of culture that organizations will build,
amid such uncertainty. Those that are
best in talent development, harnessing
leadership and building the organizational culture that can adapt to the new
world are going to be the winners in this
game, he said. “How to create a company
culture that doesn’t know the answers
yet will develop and evolve during the
journey,” he added.
In his speech dur ing P& A Grant
Thornton’s 30th anniversary celebration, attended by more than a thousand
employees, alumni, clients and business
partners, the global CEO lauded the local
auditing firm for being a symbol of disruption “even before ‘disruption’ became
a buzzword.”
In 1988, at a trying time for the Philippines’s fledgling democracy and amid the
dominance of a single player in the local
auditing industry, Punongbayan & Araullo (P&A) was set up by public accountant

Benjamin R. Punongbayan and seasoned
banker Jose Araullo. From starting with
eight people, it has grown to more than
900 employees with 21 partners across
its nationwide network.
Bodin cited two things that make the
corporate culture in the Philippine firm
strong: its gender balance and the presence of millennials.
“So much research and experience show
that diverse and gender-balanced businesses deliver better results, are better
able to handle the disruption that goes in
every sector, and are more resilient,” he
said in his speech. He also considers millennials—comprising about 80 percent of
the P&A Grant Thornton work force—as a
strong driver for growth, given their love
for technology and being at the forefront
of innovation.
Bodin said he remains optimistic about
the impact of automation on the way the
auditing firm conducts business, which
focuses on being trusted business advisors to a diverse clientele. “Automation
allows much more information and analyses about our business and that of our
clients that lead to strategic, in-depth
discussions about the future, and more
qualified work for our people, so the shift
is a positive thing,” he added.
He said GTI has massively developed
new audit methodologies and modernized
the whole network in the last five years
to drive quality and efficiency. “Robots,
AI, and a lot of buzzwords are out there
and changing what we do. We’ve not only
geared up on the audit side, but are also developing similar technology to bring over
to other service lines,” Bodin revealed.
P&A Grant Thornton Chairman and
CEO Maria Victoria C. Españ​o echoes
Bodin’s excitement over the ongoing shift
and how accounting firms can suit up for
more changes to come.
“Our local economy has made bold leaps
and the Philippine government, just like
others in the world, is making meaningful
investments in infrastructure and technology to support growth. This is why we
celebrate our 30th anniversary with the
theme ‘Unlimited’: we are unlimited in
our ability to hurdle change and maintain
optimism and confidence in businesses
and in our nation,” she said.

Case clippings

By Justice S J Ranada Jr.
EXPROPRIATION–Purpose of just compensation
The purpose of just compensation is not to reward the owner for the
property taken, but to compensate him for the loss thereof. Thus, the
true measure of the property is the market value at the time of the taking, when the loss resulted. The state is not obliged to pay premium to
the property owner for appropriating the latter’s property, but is only
bound to make good the loss sustained by the landowner.
Republic v. Macabagdal
GR 227215
10 Jan 2018
Perlas-Bernabe,J

ONCERNED over sightings
of child laborers in Bogo City
and Medellin town in Cebu,
the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE 7) in the region
will have work places where children
were seen, inspected.
In a meeting with the Board of
Trustees of the District Tripartite
Council (DTC) in Bogo-Medellin
Milling Corp. Inc. (Bomedco), DOLE
7 acting Regional Director Cyril L.
Ticao asked assistance from the representatives of the council to help the
department check and monitor the
presence of child laborers.
Cebu Provincial Field Office
chief Maria Grace V. Diaz relayed an earlier unverified report
of child laborers still present in
the area.
Ticao urged DTC-Bomedco to
be vigilant and help promote the
DOLE’s campaign on “Child Labor
Prevention and Elimination.”
“We want the different DTCs in
the region—not only DTC-Bomedco—to be actively involved in our
advocacy. We would be able to reach
further heights and disseminate information to everybody that child
labor is illegal if they are one with
us. Parents or guardians of these
children should be able to understand that what they’re actually
doing is banned and against the
law,” Ticao said.
After the revocation of the Negros Island Region, apart from DTCBomedco, the Central Azucarera de
Bais, Universal Robina Sugar Milling Corp. and the Universal Robina
Corp. Tolong Sugar Mill of Negros
Oriental are now under the umbrella
of the Regional Tripartite Industrial

Peace Council of Region 7.
Ticao admitted that child labor usually happens in the sugar
industry, and poverty is the main
reason children do back-breaking
work to help their parents earn
a living.
“The DOLE has livelihood funds
intended for the parents of child laborers. In this way, we would be able
to help them explore other alternative means of livelihood, hoping to
stop them from letting their children
work,” he said.
Barangay Cayang in Bogo City
and Barangays Caputatan Sur and
Caputatan Norte in Medellin already received livelihood assistance
from the DOLE for the parents of
noted child laborers.
There is a need to strengthen
and revitalize the campaign against
child labor, particularly in Bogo and
Medellin, given the reports received
by the DOLE, he continued.
In June 2017 the DOLE’s Child
Prevention and Elimination Program
monitored said places, saying the
DOLE would continue sustaining its
linkage and network among barangays concerned where child laborers
were usually spotted.
The DOLE would once again deploy personnel to do monitoring and
verify reports received.
“Eliminating child labor is a
gigantic task, given the economic
situation that most of our brothers and sisters are into. But, with
the help and cooperation of our
social partners, like the Industrial Peace Councils and District
Tripartite Councils, and the local
government units, we fervently
hope we would be able to help
achieve the country’s sustainable
development goal of ending child
labor,” Ticao said.

AEV proposes to expand
regional airports in 35 years
By Lorenz S. Marasigan

T

Correspondent

G

OOD news for public-school
teachers.
The Department of Education (DepEd) on Tuesday reported to
the Committee on Basic Education
and Culture of the House of Representatives that school-based personnel will be among the first to receive
the performance-based bonus (PBB)
for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 this month.
As of March 5, 2018, teachers in
the Ilocos region, Central Luzon,
Calabarzon, Bicol, Davao and Socksksargen have already received their
PBB, following the department’s
receipt of certificate of compliance
from the AO25 Inter-Agency Task
Force (IATF) in January.
“Others will receive it within
this week, or before March ends,
we will make sure that we will
complete all schools before we
go to the Region, Division and
Central offices,” DepEd Undersecretary for Planning and Field
Operations Jesus Mateo informed
the committee members.
A representative from the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) Organization, Position Classification and Compensation Bureau (OPCCB) confirmed
Mateo’s report and added that,
aside from the six regions, they
are already processing the Special
Allotment Release Order (Saro) for
the National Capital Region (NCR)
and Cagayan Valley, which are set
to get the incentive within the
week. DBM-OPCCB is also already
evaluating the submission of Regions 8, 9, 10, Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and Caraga,
and awaiting the submission of
Regions 4B, 6, 7 and the now-defunct Negros Island Region (NIR).
Mateo admitted the DepEd encountered challenges in the requirements for the grant of PBB, some of
which include factors the depart-

ment addressed in compliance with
the PBB requirements for FY 2017.
The AO25 Memorandum Circular
(MC) 2016-1 prescribes the criteria
and conditions for the grant of PBB
for FY 2016. Given are the following
requirements: 1) Department Performance Accomplishment Report;
2) Good Governance Conditions;
3) Public Financial Management
Reports; 4) Agency Procurement
Compliance and Performance; and
5) Posting of Operations Manual
or ISO Certification. A government
agency must be able to comply with
all conditions in order to qualify for
the release of PBB.
The department complied with
the set criteria but had difficulty
meeting the preconditions on the
Philippine Government Electronic
Procurement System (PhilGEPS),
the budget utilization rate (BUR),
and specific physical accomplishments, which nearly rendered the
department ineligible. Through
the joint efforts of various delivery
units within all governance levels,
the DepEd took significant steps
and actions to overcome these
impediments and, in the fourth
quarter of 2017, submitted the
necessary documents for approval
by the DBM.
Mateo said that, since a major
part of the department’s delayed
compliance was due to procurement issues, the DepEd is proposing
to adopt a framework or ordering
agreement to mitigate the delays
and ensure improved compliance.
The undersecretary further
noted that, for the PBB, FY 2017,
come summer of 2018, the department will conduct orientation on
the submission for PBB.
Based on Executive Order (EO)
80, series 2012, PBB is “a top-up
incentive given to personnel of bureaus or delivery unit in accordance
to their contribution to the accomplishment of their department’s
overall targets and commitments.”

@lorenzmarasigan

HE infrastructure arm of
Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc.
(AEV) has submitted a P148billion unsolicited proposal to the
transportation department for the
expansion, operation and maintenance
of four major Philippine regional airports
over the next three and a half decades.
Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc. proposed to increase the capacity of
the following airports in the Visayas and Mindanao: Iloilo International Airport, Bacolod-Silay
Airport, Laguindingan Airport and
New Bohol International Airport
in Panglao.
Sabin Aboitiz, the company’s
president, said his group intends to
modernize and expand the first three

airports immediately, as these hubs
are already operating above capacity
and require urgent rehabilitation.
The New Bohol is eyed to open
the island further to the international-tourism market as part of
the national tourism strategy. This
move will also decongest Manila’s
Ninoy Aquino International Airport,
Aboitiz said.
“Through this unsolicited propos-

al, we intend to support the government’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ program
as we develop sustainable airport facilities that reflect and support the
tremendous economic and tourism
potential of the Philippines’s regions
and provinces,” he added.
The aforesaid regions have been
experiencing tremendous growth
in the last few years. The airports
have struggled to follow the pace of
the development. The Iloilo and Bacolod airports have been operating
for 10 years, while Laguindingan
started operating in 2013, but has
been operating above its capacity
since its opening year.
Aboitiz said the P148-billion
multiphased project will “transform the facilities into world-class
airports every Filipino deserves and
can be proud of.”
The government earlier identified
the modernization of the regional
airports as a critical infrastructure
project and launched a tender for a
public-private partnership for five
airports under the build-operatetransfer law in 2014, but this plan
was canceled in 2017.

Aboitiz said the “pooling of resources” to develop, operate and
maintain all four airports is required
in order to “unlock synergies” that
would benefit all stakeholders, including the government.
“Not only will none of the airports require any form of subsidy.
The combined potential of the four
regional gateways results in overall
gains for both the government and
the local economy,” he said.
The company hopes to receive
the award for the unsolicited proposal this year.
Unsolicited proposals, under
law, are required to undergo a Swiss
challenge, where other groups will
be given the chance to submit proposals that will compete with the
original proponent’s offer.
The original proponent will
then have the chance to offer a
counter proposal.
If an award materializes within
the year, Aboitiz said his group could
start working with the relevant government and community stakeholders to improve operations and passenger experience in 2019.

Davao farmers
seek inclusion of
grains, veggies in
DA’s loan program

Teachers nationwide
to get merit bonuses F
By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

Editor: Efleda P. Campos • Thursday, March 8, 2018 A9

By Noel T. Provido
Contributor

ARMERS in Davao region are
asking the Department of Agriculture (DA) to include palay,
corn and vegetables in its loan program for small farmers.
Under the Production Loan Easy
Access (PLEA), only four commodities are covered for Davao region:
cacao, mango, onion and garlic.
PLEA is a special credit program
implemented through the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC),
an attached agency of the DA that
synchronizes all credit policies and
programs to support the agency’s
priority programs.
“It [PLEA] is designed for marginal
and small farmers and fishermen to
have access to a fast, convenient and
affordable credit. It has low interest
rate of only 6 percent per annum or
0.5 percent per month,” ACPC program development management
chief Noel Clarence Ducusin said.
In a meeting held on February 28
in Davao City, Ducusin said PLEA
offers non-collateralized loans for
agri-fishery production through cooperative banks, cooperatives, farmers and fishers organizations, and
non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) as credit-delivery conduits
in extending loans to marginal and
small farmers and fishermen.
In the Davao region, one of the
accredited conduit banks is the Mindanao Consolidated Cooperative
Bank where interested farmers can

SWIMMING SPREE

Taking advantage of the crystal-clear water of a river in Baluarte Village in Santiago City, Isabela, and to beat the
summer heat, these local boys enjoy diving into the free-flowing cascades. LEONARDO PERANTE II

file their application for PLEA.
Under PLEA, small farmers and
fisherfolk can avail themselves of
a P50,000 production loan. “Except for high-value crops such as
cacao, farmers can borrow up to
P150,000,” Ducusin said.
“Initially, we [ACPC] will not
engage with rice [production], as
there are already existing interventions, such as Sikat Saka of
the Land Bank of the Philippines
[LandBank],” he added.
Sikat Saka is a program that offers a direct-credit window from
LandBank and integrated support
to small-palay farmers to improve
creditworthiness and viability of
their crop production.

Roger Gualberto of the Vegetable Industry Council of Southern
Mindanao (VICSMin) also asked
DA officials to include vegetables in
the loan program, as most of their
members are small farmers.
“If we talk of marginal farmers, among them are the vegetable
farmers tending only a small parcel
of land to produce vegetables,” he
said, adding that VICSMin already
prepared a resolution for vegetables’ inclusion in PLEA.
DA Regional Director Ricardo
Oñate Jr. said palay and vegetable
farmers could submit a letter of appeal to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol for the inclusion of
their crop under the PLEA.

“If palay production will eventually be included, we urge our farmers to use their borrowed amount to
purchase equipment and mechanize
their farm production,” Oñate said.
He said labor cost is one of the
major expenses incurred in palay
production.
“For our farmer to be competitive,
there is a need to invest on mechanization,” he said.
Davao del Sur and Davao Occidental farmers are also appealing
for the inclusion of their provinces
as a PLEA- covered area. While the
provinces were not included in the
top 10 provinces, they said numerous
marginal farmers can be identified
in their provinces.

Agencies launch info drive
Two 30-minute brownouts set
to protect Davao’s rich wildlife in southern part of Davao City

D

AVAO CITY—The Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF), the Department of Environment
and Natural Resources (DENR XI), other government and private organizations have embarked
on a series of campaign activities on understanding
and protecting the Davao Region’s wildlife.
The activity is in line with the UN Wildlife
Week held in March 3 to March 9. PEF director for
research and conservation Jason Ibanez said the
advocacy is an alternative activity for the youth to
keep them away from the gadget-base lifestyle.
“We have evidence that too much exposure to
gadgets are stressful to children so we are trying

to offer an alternative as they may not know that
they can also do it,” he said. He said the children
forget to exercise their senses by interacting with
nature. Ibanez said there are at least 370 species
of birds found only in the Davao Region and out of
this number, 116 are endemic in the Philippines.
He said Davao City has a rich wildlife that even
the smallest parrot in the world can only be found
here named Parrakeet and the Guiabero Parrot
particularly in the forest near Las Terrazas. Contrary
to some people who think Davao City has few bird
species,Ibanezfurther said the SilveryKingfisher can
be seen at the PEF center in Malagos, Calinan. PNA

D

AVAO Light and Power
Co. Inc. will conduct two
30-minute power interruptions on March 11, affecting customers connected to the
Tugbok Substation.
These service disruptions will
be necessary to shut down Davao
Light’s Tugbok Substation to facilitate the installation of major
equipment.
To avoid longer duration of power
interruptions, load from the affect-

ed substation will be transferred to
nearby lines for 30 minutes any time
between 12:01 to 1 a.m.
Normalization or return of load
back to its normal set up will be any
time between 8 and 9 a.m., also for
30 minutes only.
Specifically affected are customers from crossing Ulas (Mercury
Drug) up to Buda. This includes the
whole area of Catalunan Pequeno,
Mintal, Tugbok, Los Amigos, Calinan, Lacson and Marilog.

A10 Thursday, March 8, 2018 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

editorial

Fighting terrorism

B

Y being vigilant, ordinary citizens can help the
government in its fight against terrorism. This
was the message conveyed to the faithful by the
Catholic Church on Tuesday. In a statement released to the media, Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said: “In our time now, we should always be
vigilant because there are always groups who are out to
make trouble. We pray that days of prayer and penance
be respected by all.”
Pabillo issued the statement following the arrest of spouses Abdul
Nasser and Raisalam Lomondot, both from Lanao del Sur, who were
nabbed along C. M. Recto Ave. in Divisoria, Manila, last Saturday
while in possession of a grenade and handgun. Police officials said
Lomondot is one of the leaders of the Maute Group who took part
in the attack of a Civilian Active Auxiliary detachment in Barangay
Mantanpoli Marantao, Lanao del Sur, at the height of the Marawi
siege last year. He reportedly underwent training at a local Islamic
State camp in Butig, Lanao del Sur.
National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ronald M. dela Rosa
said police operatives are looking for other suspects, although he did
not disclose how many and who they are. He assured the public, however, that similar operations to go after members of the terror group,
who have managed to slip into Metro Manila, are pretty much ongoing.
“We lacked in our efforts when they managed to go out of Mindanao, but in fairness to our security forces in Mindanao, we cannot cordon off the whole island,” the PNP chief said, adding that the
sheer size of the island allowed the escape of some of the Maute terror group members.
We commend the PNP for the arrest of Nasser and Lomondot, who
reportedly traveled to Manila by land while using a fictitious name.
Chief Supt. Joel Napoleon Coronel, Manila Police District director, said that, although the spouses came to Manila under assumed
names, they were able to track them down through their efforts and
coordination with different intelligence agencies.
Rev. Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Public Affairs Committee, said it
is the job of authorities to ensure the safety of the public, and make
sure that intelligence gathering is working properly. “Law enforcers
should tighten security. They should be more visible in public,” he said.
The Catholic priest also echoed Pabillo’s statement that the
people should be vigilant and always be wary of their surroundings. Even ordinary salespeople can help. For example, those who
work in stores that sell possible bomb-making materials should
be aware of suspicious purchases. Many items commonly used in
making bombs are openly sold in hardware stores, pharmacies,
hobby shops and electronics stores. To recognize suspicious purchases, citizens need to know the items that have value in terrorist applications.
All of us have a role to play in our fight against terrorism.
What is needed now is for all stakeholders to join hands and show
our solidarity against groups who are out to spread violence and
terror in our country.
Since 2005

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie [the middle class] is to grind them between the
millstones of taxation and inflation.”—Vladimir Lenin
“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as
deadly as a hit man.”—Ronald Reagan

W

E have been conditioned to believe that inflation is—as
one person on social media described it—a natural result of a growing economy. That is right up there with
“heavy traffic” as an inevitable result of economic growth. Have
you noticed that poor countries with both inflation and low economic growth experience inflation?

The steady increase in prices paid
for in currency is a relatively new phenomenon of the 20th century. There
has always been inflation because of
governments debasing currency, going back to ancient Rome.
However, if you look back, the
exchange value of goods to other
goods has been incredibly stable.
The inflation rate in England way
back 500 years before 1900 was
0.50 percent, meaning prices doubled every 150 years. This data
is based on written records of

transactions like “bills of sale”
stating, “Received from Joseph
Smith three milk cows in payment
for 20 bushels of wheat.”
During the past years, I have
written numerous times that the
“Economy Killers” of the Philippines
were bad government finances and
inflation. The administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo started taking
care of the first.
The government budget deficit
as a percentage of GDP decreased,
from 5 percent to the current

Lawyers must kiss and tell

T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor in Chief

Senior Editors

Inflation: So what?

Atty. Irwin C. Nidea Jr.

Tax law for business

I

magine a world with no lawyers. Some will be elated, considering how lawyers are maligned mercilessly by our society.
But many will also cringe at the idea, since for them, lawyers
are the bastion of justice and the protector of their rights.
In order for lawyers to fulfill their
role, they need to enjoy the trust and
confidence of their clients. This trust
is protected by what is called attorneyclient privilege. This privilege is held
by the client and not by the lawyer. It is
used by the client for his protection so
he can freely communicate his secrets
without fear of disclosure.
In a bold move, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is challenging
this legal tenet that traces its roots
way back in the Roman era. Revenue
Memorandum Circular (RMC) 122018 mandates that the Commissioner
of Internal Revenue is empowered by
Section 5 of the Tax Code to obtain
on a regular basis from any person
other than the person whose internal
revenue-tax liability is subject to audit or investigation any information.
According to the CIR, this provision

of the Tax Code should be taken as an
additional exception to the attorneyclient privilege because of the following reasons:
1. The Lawyer’s Code of Professional Responsibility (“Lawyer’s
Code”) provides that a lawyer shall
not reveal the confidence or secrets of
his client except, among others, when
required by law;
2. The Supreme Court has stressed
that the privilege against disclosure
of confidential communication or information does not extend to those
made in contemplation of a crime or
perpetration of fraud.
In the same RMC, the CIR warned
that a lawyer must submit all privilege
information upon his request. Failure
to do so is tantamount to one year to
10 years of imprisonment.
I cannot blame the CIR for trying

3 percent. The Philippine government debt to GDP has been
reduced to 42 percent, from 70
percent in 2004.
However, if you track inflation to
economic growth, the picture is not
pretty. We do not always see an “inflation up; growth down” scenario.
But what we do witness is inflation
stopping or slowing an uptrend in
growth and delaying an economic
recovery.
While it is hard to qualify and
quantify its effect on the Philippine
economy, inflation seems to hit the
country more negatively than other
countries, except in periods of extremely high inflation. From my
observations, this is because the
Philippines is basically cash-based
consumer spending, businesses
are usually conservative when it
comes to borrowing and we have not
learned how to profit from inflation
by flipping assets.
The inflation rates for January
and February are high as the economy was hit with a perfect storm.
The weaker peso combined with high
global oil prices and then the additional hit with the new and higher
excise taxes did more damage with
the high inflation. Whether this will
immediately show in lower economic
growth remains to be seen and is
difficult to forecast.

to find ways, to obtain information so
that he can achieve his mandate. But
will RMC 12-2018 fly, if questioned in
the Supreme Court?
As to the first reason laid down in
the RMC, the Lawyer’s Code states that
the privilege cannot be invoked if a law
provides for an exception. What this
contemplates is a categorical provision
of law saying that the privilege must be
waived. This is not present in Section
5 of the Tax Code. Although the Tax
Code states that the CIR can obtain
information from “any person,” there
is no specific provision calling for an
exception to the attorney-client privilege. A mere inference will not do. Thus,
the exception must remain.
As to the second ground, an important distinction must be made between
a case where a client takes on the services of an attorney for illicit purposes,
seeking advice about how to go around
the law for the purpose of evading tax
and a case where a client thinks he might
have previously committed something
illegal and consults his attorney about
it. The first case clearly does not fall
within the privilege because the same
cannot be invoked for purposes illegal. The second case falls within the
exception because, whether the act for
which the advice turns out to be illegal,
the privilege cannot be waived if the
disclosure leads to evidence, not yet in
the hands of the BIR, which might lead
to possible action against him. These

Nonetheless, the inflation tempest is not over. What can be done
to mitigate the negative effects? The
answer is not much.
The government has an almost
impossible situation trying to assist the poor to weather the storm.
The amount of funding to offset the
increased costs to the lowest economic groups is going to be difficult
to distribute fairly and efficiently.
But something must be done and
done quickly.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
may raise interest rates but, in this
case, that may be a waste of time. If
the economy is “overheating”—too
much money chasing too few goods
—then a rate increase is viable. But
the current inflation is not, in any
way, the result of too quick/too high
economic activity.
In fact, a rate increase could even
push inflation higher, as the cost of
borrowing would be build into all
consumer prices. For now, and for
most of us, this may be a case of
“Make sure tray tables are in their
upright position and your seat belt
is securely fastened.”
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my
web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow
me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stockmarket information and technical analysis tools
provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

cases may be readily distinguished, because the privilege cannot be invoked
or used as a shield for an illegal act,
as in the first example; while the BIR
may not have a case against the client in the second example and cannot
use the attorney client relationship to
build up a case against the latter [G.R.
105938, September 20, 1996]. Thus,
unless a lawyer is engaged for the purpose of committing or furthering tax
evasion, the attorney-client privilege
cannot be waived.
According to the Supreme Court,
the fiduciary duty of a lawyer is what
makes the law profession a unique position of trust and confidence, which
distinguishes it from any other calling. Imagine a world where lawyers
are free to reveal your secrets to the
BIR. It will be a world full of insecurities and it will be an environment that
ultimately undermines the constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel.
The author is a partner of Du-Baladad and Associates Law Offices (BDB Law), a member-firm of
WTS Global.
The article is for general information only and
is not intended, nor should be construed as a substitute, for tax, legal or financial advice on any specific
matter. Applicability of this article to any actual or
particular tax or legal issue should be supported,
therefore, by a professional study or advice. If you
have any comments or questions concerning the
article, you may e-mail the author at irwin.nidea@
bdblaw.com.ph or call 403-2001 local 330.

Opinion

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Strategies and innovations
to improve health care for all

Lifted up and given
Msgr. Sabino A. Vengco Jr.

Alálaong Bagá

Cecilio T. Arillo

database

A

YALA Corp. Chairman and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de
Ayala is this year’s holder of the Metrobank Foundation
Professorial Chair for Public Service and Governance as a
corporate champion of innovative health-care solutions. He was
the first from the private sector to receive this distinction by the
Ateneo Professional Schools and Metrobank Foundation.

In his lecture titled “Improving
Healthcare for All: Strategies & Innovations at the Ayala Group” at
the Ateneo Professional Schools auditorium in Makati City, Zobel said
the private sector, with its access
to capital-intensive markets, plays
a crucial role in filling health-care
gaps through pursuing cutting-edge
approaches that address urgent
social needs.
He added the Ayala Group embraces reinvention and diversification with the roll out of pharmaceuticals and small community-based
clinics that reach a wider segment
of the population. In recent years,
the country’s oldest conglomerate has expanded their health-care
ventures under the brand names
Generika pharmacies, MedGrocer
online pharmacies and FamilyDOC
primary-care clinics.
“To us, the most powerful type
of innovation is building businesses
that address social needs and improve lives,” Zobel said. He also called
for a collaborative approach between
the public and private sector toward
the common goal of improving health
care for all. It comes as a surprise to
many that Ayala’s first venture into
health care can be traced back to as
early as 1834, when Johann Andreas
Zobel set up “La Drogueria y Botica
de Zobel” in Intramuros. The drugstore survived for over a hundred
years, but eventually closed during
the Second World War.
“It is important to note that our
return to health care was not by
chance. It was a result of a deliberate
exercise in innovation, something
which we have embedded into our
thinking at the Ayala Group. Allow
me to begin by briefly touching on
our view on innovation in the Ayala
Group, since it is the same mind-set
that has shaped our approach to
health care,” Zobel said.
He shared three examples from
across the Ayala Group to illustrate
its approach to this kind of innovation, starting with its experience in
Manila Water.
“A few of you might still recall
the terrible water situation we had
in Metro Manila back in the 1990s.
The water crisis was even more pronounced in low-income communities. Back then, people would queue
in long lines twice a day to buy their
water in pails, at P40 per cubic meter, or a total cost of up to P1,500 per
month,” Zobel said.
In response, Manila Water pioneered what it called the “Tubig
Para sa Barangay program,” an innovative approach of working with
low-income communities to ensure
that they could have proper access
to affordable water. The program introduced flexible financing options,
socialized tariff schemes and, more
important, engaged community
members as partners in the program.
“Today, participants in our program enjoy clean and potable water
from their own homes with significant cost-savings, paying only P9.47
per cubic meter, which is an average
of only P165 per month. More important, we have achieved 100-percent
collection efficiency in the program’s
communities, water-borne diseases
in their areas have been reduced, and
the overall sanitation conditions have
greatly improved,” Zobel revealed.
“Let me also share with you an
example of this innovation mindset in our education business. A
few years ago, we were looking at
the educational sector and noted
the massive dropout rates across all

The Metrobank Foundation Professional Chair for Public Service
and Governance, a joint undertaking between the Metrobank
Foundation and the Ateneo de
Manila University, which started
in 2010, seeks to give due recognition to distinguished leaders for
their exceptional contributions
and achievements in the public
and private sectors.
educational levels. I was astonished
with the numbers: out of those who
enter Grade 1, only 29 percent get
to enter college, with only 21 percent eventually graduating. Among
these graduates, only 9 percent are
considered employable,” he noted.
“To address these critical gaps,”
he said, “our team brainstormed
on various possible ideas, one of
which was the concept behind Apec
Schools. Apec Schools, which stands
for ‘Affordable Private Education
Centers,’ aimed to address the lack
of access to quality, affordable education, particularly in the highschool level.”
Apec’s learning modules focus on
enhancing employability and cultivating life skills. The modules build
industry-specific knowledge, but
also focus on information technology proficiency, business communication skills and critical thinking, to
name a few. Very important, it also
provides its students with valuable
soft skills and work habits, such as
self-confidence, grit and persistence.
Today, Apec has over 16,000 students
across 23 sites in Mega Manila.
As a final example, where 70 percent of Filipinos do not have a bank
account, “let me share with you our
experience with Mynt, our fintech
joint venture with Globe and Ant
Financial. Mynt now has the biggest
mobile money base in the country,
with more than 3 million registered customers, 12,000 partner
outlets and facilities, and P1 billion
in transaction value per week. And
with Ant Financial now as our strategic partner, we see great potential in
expanding these services to millions
of Filipinos,” Zobel said.
MBFI President Aniceto Sobrepeña, who also serves as the acting
president of Manila Doctors Hospital, reaffirmed Zobel’s call for a
more intensive public-private collaboration in health care, noting that
both parties have the same goal—to
make the Philippines a better and
healthier place.
“To improve the Philippine health
situation, institutions, both public
and private, can no longer work in
silos. We must work hand in hand.
This is why we are happy to name
Mr. Zobel as this year’s Metrobank
Foundation Professorial Chairholder,” Sobrepeña said.
The Metrobank Foundation Professional Chair for Public Service
and Governance, a joint undertaking
between the Metrobank Foundation
and the Ateneo de Manila University,
which started in 2010, seeks to give
due recognition to distinguished
leaders for their exceptional contributions and achievements in the public and private sectors. The undertaking is rooted in the common vision of
encouraging Filipinos to contribute
to national development by providing a platform for sharing cuttingedge research and innovations.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo
@gmail.com.

T

he mystery of God’s salvific love in Jesus is dramatized
when He was lifted up on the cross and given by the Father
so that whoever believes in Him will not be condemned
(John 3:14-21). For those who look up to Jesus on the cross with
faith have, in fact, eternal life.

He must be lifted up
The cross was a scandal, a stumbling
block to many. A savior hanging on
the gibbet of the cross. In anticipation of the Jews’ cry of repudiation:
“Take Him away, take Him away!
Crucify Him!” (John 19:15), the
evangelist firmly locates Jesus on
the cross, taking a cue from the Wisdom of Solomon (16:6-7) that spoke
of “sign of salvation” in the brazen
serpent in the wilderness. In a play
of the word “lifted up,” we are told
that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son
of Man be lifted up, so that everyone
who believes in Him may have eternal life.” During the wanderings of
the Israelites in the wilderness, their

endless grumbling against Moses
and against God led them to be
stricken by fiery serpents (Numbers
21:6-9). Begging Moses to mediate
for them with God, they were instructed to look upon the brazen
serpent Moses was commanded to
mount on a pole. They were healed
by looking upon the ordered sign,
that is, by believing in God’s power
as manifested in the serpent.
Now all those who look upon and
believe in the crucified and lifted
up Son of Man will be saved. The
double significance of lifted up bespeaks the cruel lifting up of Jesus
upon the cross by His enemies (John
8:28; 12:32), and His lifting up and
exaltation by the Heavenly Father

Thursday, March 8, 2018 A11

at His cross and resurrection. The
hanging on the cross was not the
end of Jesus but the beginning of
His ascent to glory to the Father.
The evangelist clearly has in mind
the description by Isaiah (53:13)
of the suffering servant, “Behold
my servant shall prosper: he shall
be lifted up and glorified exceedingly.” The healing of the many was
accomplished by the suffering of
the servant.

He was given by the Father

The other word John uses to delve
into the soteriological significance
of Jesus on the cross is the verb “to
give.” Again, its double significance
alludes first to the handing over of
Jesus by his enemies to Pilate (John
18:30.35.36; 19:11) and by Pilate to
the soldiers to crucify Jesus. But
its deeper meaning refers to God’s
“giving” us His only Son not only
at the incarnation but, likewise, at
the sacrifice of the cross. Whatever
Jesus’ enemies might have thought
they were doing to and against Him,
the evangelist is tracing what God
is writing straight for our salvation
through their crooked lines.
With echoes of the faithfulness and sacrifice highlighted in
the story of Abraham and his son
Isaac (Genesis 22:2.16-18) and in

Of online trolls and Benham Rise
Val A. Villanueva

Businesswise

O

nline trolls have been on overdrive to support government efforts to unseat Chief Justice Maria Lourdes A.
Sereno from her office. The pattern is easy to discern:
Throw as much mud as you can to vilify Sereno, and attack with
vitriol and threaten physically those who support her.
One may wonder where on
Earth these trolls get their energy
to burn the Net with their divisive
and venomous rants in support of
their idol, President Duterte. Why,
even some of them, most prominently the so-called queen of fake
news Mocha Uson, now holds sensitive positions in government.
With an estimated 60 million
Filipinos engaged in Facebook,
this kind of operation requires
enormous wherewithal. W hile
I can believe that some of them
genuinely support Duterte, going
online 24/7 just to patrol the Net
would need more than adulation
for the president.
On December 7 of last year,
Bloomberg came up with a story
penned by Lauren Etter, entitled
“What happens when the government uses Facebook as a weapon?”
Etter detailed how the Duterte administration evolved through the
expert use of social media, particularly Facebook, to curb detractors
of the administration. She exposed
how the so-called die-hard Duterte
supporters (DDS) have been abusing social media to manipulating
public opinion in their favor by
jointly and violently attacking people with anti-Duterte sentiment.

The question now is: Who is funding the troll farm?
A report that circulated in social media pointed to Jo Soliman,
a Duterte businessman-friend engaged primarily in agriculture. The
entrepreneur, owner of the Pure
Group of Cos., is also reportedly a
close friend of Agriculture Secretary
Emmanuel F. Piñol.
A source closely identified with
Piñol but who declined to be identified flatly denied such report as “a
lot of bull.” He admitted that Piñol,
indeed, knows Soliman. He, however, claimed that Soliman “plays
fair,” is “clean” and even does philanthropic work.
But in May of this year, Soliman,
with the help of Piñol, got an approval from President to affirm the
Benham Rise as a protected food
supply exclusive zone. Duterte also
decided to build a large cold-storage facility on Benham Bank, the
shallowest portion of the region.
“This will serve as a research facility and advance command post
center in the area to avoid rampant
cases of illegal fishing,” Piñol was
then quoted as saying. According
to the agriculture Secretary, he
was tasked by the President to find
out whether it is feasible to put up

such a structure in Benham Rise.
Piñol then sought an extra P5 billion in his department’s 2018 budget,
which will be used for the expansion
of the 13-million-hectare Benham
Rise as a protected food-supply zone.
He said the additional amount is on
top of the P213-billion proposed allocation next year, bringing the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) total
proposal to P218 billion.
“The proposed P5-billion budget
for Benham Rise was submitted a
few months ago to the Department
of Budget and Management [DBM]
during the technical committee
hearing on the DA’s budgetary requirements for 2018,” Piñol said.
Soliman is reportedly about to
bag a billion-peso deal for the Benham Rise development. In turn, he
will build the edifices needed for
the project.
Again, the BusinessWise DA
source denied the deal, and blamed
the media for spreading black propaganda, tracing it to a certain Chinese
individual with a two-letter surname. “He is funding this campaign,”
the source alleged. “He benefits from
the National Food Authority’s [NFA]
rice import business. The recent fake
NFA rice shortage is part of their play.
There is no such budget for Benham
Rise, only P500 million for research
and not with the DA.”
According to the source, the department’s approved budget is only
P65 billion. Piñol proposed P213
billion, but the DBM did not approve it, and Malacañang submitted
only P65 billion, which Congress
approved under the 2018 General
Appropriations Act.
“The estimated take for corrupt
rice importation is P50 per 100-kilo
bag,” the source explained. “With
250,000 metric tons for importation, that’s about P2 billion in profit. These black ops are intended to

the figure of the suffering servant
(Isaiah 53:12), the evangelist points
to the depths of the Father’s love
as the bottom-line and most sublime ground for the entire mystery
of our salvation. “God so loved the
world that He gave His only Son.”
What could account for the things
mentioned by Jesus to Nicodemus:
the gifts of rebirth, of the Spirit, of
life in union with God, of eternal
glory? Not any merit on our part,
but alone God’s incredible love for
us can explain such divine mercy.
Alálaong bagá, we can rejoice
(Laetare) at God’s faithful love for
us even as we confess to our sinfulness. God did not give and send His
Son into the world to condemn the
world, “but that the world may be
saved through Him.” On our part it
is necessary that we believe in Jesus
and with Him concretely stand for
the light and the truth. Jesus is the
light come into the world. Believers do not prefer darkness to light.
Those who hate the light do not live
the truth. The truth and the light
are venues of our communion with
God in Jesus Christ.

Join me in meditating on the Word of God
every Sunday, from 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by
audio streaming on www.dwiz882.com.

destroy Piñol [among] the rice importers. You just don’t realize how
afraid we are to be scolded by the
President if any irregularities or
anomalies happen in the DA. This
is why we are very careful, especially
the secretary, in making sure [there
is] no overstepping of the rules, especially [those that concern] public
bidding and budget use.”
But Soliman, who is allegedly
the financier of the troll farm, is
the same businessman who was
implicated in rice-hoarding activities during the Aquino administration. Then-Interior and Local
Government Secretary Manuel A.
Roxas stumbled upon the then-new
modus operandi among rice hoarders in which imported rice from
Thailand was blended with broken
rice intended for animal feed. The
hoarders, were selling the mixed
rice as premium Sinandomeng rice.
The hoarded rice stocks were discovered in a warehouse in Malolos City,
Bulacan province.
“The broken rice residue intended
for animal feeds came from Vietnam and was being mixed with the
Blue Diamond rice imported from
Thailand, and then repacked and
being sold as ‘Golden Bee’ premium
Sinandomeng rice,” Roxas then said
in a statement.
The inspection team was made
up of the Criminal Investigation
and Detection Group, Bulacan local
officials and representatives of the
Bureau of Internal Revenue, the NFA
and the Bureau of Customs.
Roxas identified the rice hoarder
as Jo Soliman, the owner of Purefeeds Corp. The operations of the rice
mill were suspended, and charges of
violating Philippine trade laws were
filed against Soliman.
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at
mvala.v@gmail.com.

Trump should draw a real red line in Syria

I

F the war in Syria is this century’s
Spanish Civil War, then the carnage
now occurring in eastern Ghouta is a
modern-day Guernica. Yet, this may be a
situation, unlike in 1937, where the world
is in a position to do something about it.
According to human-rights groups,
more than 12,000 civilians have died
in the area of 400,000 just east of Damascus since fighting began in 2011.
As the Syrian government has ramped
up operations over the last two weeks,
more than 500 people have been killed
by air and artillery strikes. And, if reports from international aid workers
are correct, Bashar al-Assad’s regime
has added chlorine gas to its arsenal
of barbaric weapons, alongside barrel

bombs and cluster munitions. If so, this
is a violation of both the laws of war and
human decency.
Chlorine gas, while not as deadly as
other chemical and nerve agents, attacks
the respiratory system, causing permanent lung damage. Because chlorine has
so many civilian uses, from cleaning
bathrooms to purifying water, it is legal
and thus very hard to monitor when it
comes to war.
The moral responsibility for eastern
Ghouta clearly belongs to the Syrian
government and its primary sponsors,
Iran and Russia. But the West has hardly
covered itself in glory with its efforts to
stop the atrocities.
First, it failed to get any serious

sanctions against Syria at the United
Nations Security Council. And then, of
course, was President Barack Obama’s
infamous “red line” warning that the US
would respond militarily if Assad used
chemical weapons on his people. The
dictator called Obama’s bluff, one of the
worst humiliations for US foreign policy
in the post-Cold War era.
In the end, all the West got was a
limited agreement that Assad would allow Russia to destroy its stocks of nerve
agents, with chlorine exempted. According to US officials, Syria has clearly abrogated that agreement with Moscow’s
connivance.
But the West hasn’t been spineless.
Last April, after a sarin-gas assault,

President Donald J. Trump authorized
a large-scale cruise-missile attack on a
Syrian air base. At the time, many scoffed
that this was a token effort that did relatively little harm to Syria’s military. But
there has been no verified use of sarin in
Syria since the US struck back.
It’s time for another red line, one that
the US won’t back away from. Trump
should tell Assad and his Russian backers
that any more proved use of any chemical
weapon, including chlorine, will be met
with even greater retaliation than what
happened in April. It certainly won’t end
the fighting, in eastern Ghouta or across
the country, but it may take away one of
Assad’s most unconscionable methods
of terrifying his citizens. Bloomberg View

2nd Front Page
BusinessMirror

A12 Thursday, March 8, 2018

Con-com wants to devolve
issuance of business permits

P

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

@BNicolasBM

resident Duterte’s consultative
committee (Con-com) is bent
on recommending changes in
the issuance of business permits and
licenses as part of the shift to a federal
system of government.
Arthur N. Aguilar, chairman
of the Con-com Subcommittee on
Economic Reforms and Fiscal Administration, told the BusinessMirror that there is a growing
consensus among subcommittee
members that business permits
and licenses should be issued at
regional offices.
“The subcommittee’s growing
consensus is that, as much as possible, all permits and licenses should
be issued at the level of the regions.

As much as possible, but all of these
are subject to federal standards,”
sa id A g u i l a r, a ma nagement
executive with political science and
economics background.
He noted that with the current setup, putting up a business
in Davao would require entrepreneurs to go to Manila to get most
of the permits.
Aguilar said he is optimistic that
businesses would welcome this important proposal. The committee is

set to decide on this in their third
subcommittee meeting on March
15. Susan Ubalde-Ordinario, vice
chairman of the subcommittee,
said “ease of doing business is really one of the major desires of the
business community.”
“I think that stems from the perception of the business community
that there has to be an easier way
of doing business. So, actually, if
we are going to regionalize, we have
to give that right to the regions
that they can enter into contracts,
permits, licenses and franchises,
but, of course, this has to be within the limits of the Constitution

See “Con-com,” A2

The subcommittee’s growing
consensus is that, as much as
possible, all permits and licenses
should be issued at the level of the
regions.”—Aguilar

O

enjoy higher remittance, while I have
more investment options given the
extra cash generated by the favorable
exchange rate,” said Lim, who has been
working in Singapore for more than a
decade. “It has definitely encouraged
me to invest more back home, given
the slight improvement and the positive outlook on the country’s economy.”

The peso is the worst performer
among Asia’s major currencies this
year, as the government’s aggressive
infrastructure drive fuels imports and
widens the current-account deficit.
Remittances from Filipinos living
overseas have been steadily rising for
more than a decade to reach a record
in 2017, and the nation’s Central Bank

expects them to rise by 3.6 percent
to $29.1 billion this year.

Remittance dependent

In value terms, the Philippines was the
world’s largest remittance recipient after India and China in 2016, according
to the World Bank. The inflows are the
See “Peso,” A2

Is migration the Philippine ‘Dutch disease’?
As a backgrounder, the term
Dutc h d isease refers to t he
deindustrialization of a country
when the discovery of a natural resource abundance makes the said
country dependent on the exploitation and exportation of the said
resource to the neglect of manufacturing. The term originated in
Holland where such a pattern of
deindustrialization and increased
unemployment occurred following
the discovery of North Sea oil in the
late-1950s. Receipts from oil revenues went up, making it possible
for Holland to sustain imports even
if industrial production declined.
In the case of the Philippines, it
is argued by some observers that
our highly successful labor migration lulls us not to do much in nurturing local industry and agriculture because remittances and jobs
overseas keep the economy alive.
Remittance inflows tend to spur
the appreciation of the peso and
weaken manufacturing at home.
The problem with the foregoing
analogy is it’s a historical approach
to growth and development. The
Dutch disease theory tends to ignore the root causes of the failure
of the industrialization to take off

under the export-oriented industrial (EOI) strategy, which, in turn, is
the primary reason the “temporary”
labor migration program has not
only become permanently temporary, but has also expanded by leaps
and bounds. To put it bluntly, the
phenomenal expansion of labor migration is mainly the consequence
of the failure of the industrial program, not the other way around.
Of course, it is indeed dangerous for the Philippines to become
more and more dependent on overseas Filipino worker (OFW) remittances. In the first place, there are
many dangers lurking in the present
global political and economic order.
One danger is the rising xenophobia
or anti-migrant attitude in Europe
and even in America. Anti-migrant
political parties are winning the
votes in Europe.
The most worrisome is the
Middle East, which hosts around
a quarter of the OFW population.
The Shia-Sunni conflict between
Iran and Saudi Arabia can explode
into a shooting war between the two
giants of the region. Right now, a
proxy war between the two is taking place in Yemen. The market for
oil is also bound to go down, as the

world keeps progressing in making
vehicles and electricity less and less
dependent on fossil fuel.
In this context, it is crucial that
the country is able to restrategize its
industrial and agricultural development strategy. Given the Philippine
experience in the last four decades
under the failed EOI program, the
country cannot afford to be given
once again simplified development
choices, such as going labor-intensive or capital-intensive, export-led
or domestic-oriented production,
FDI-friendly or Filipino-first and so
on. What is needed is a pragmatic
balancing of development priorities based on existing capacities
and possibilities and a calibrated
program of economic liberalization
and protection on a case to case basis. As what Donald J. Trump and
the populist politicians in Europe
are showing, countries must be able
to rely on their individual national
strengths while cooperating with
others in promoting fair globalization and fair trading arrangements.
A critical element or component
in development restrategizing is
the mobilization of OFW savings
for more productive undertakings
at home. A lot has been written

Biodiversity team out
to save Boracay’s Puka
shells, flying foxes

itself,” Ubalde-Ordinario said.
Aguilar recognized that there
are some regions that will not
have the capabilities to implement
that immediately.
“There are some regions that
are yet to be developed, so there
will be a transition period for the
regions to acquire institutional
capability to issue permits and
licenses,” he said.
Aguilar added that they are also
proposing to have a comprehensive
land-use code, which will set out
the federal policy on the use of land
applicable to all regions.

Where are the winners from peso plunge? Look abroad
ne bright spot from the peso’s
slump to an 11-year low
against the dollar can be found
among the nation’s more than 10
million overseas workers.
The currency’s slide is spurring
Filipinos to send more money home,
fueling consumption and economic
growth in the Southeast Asian nation.
At 10 percent of GDP, remittances are
also a key source of foreign income in
the Philippines, helping to finance a
widening current-account gap.
Aileen Almazan, 37, who works as
an information-technology professional in Singapore, says it’s an opportune time to lock in more pesos
into her Philippine savings account
so she has more money to spend
when she visits Manila. Marlyn de la
Cruz, 51, a domestic helper in Hong
Kong, says the decline in the peso is
helping defray her family’s household expenses, while Irene Lim, 36, a
compliance analyst at a regional bank
in the island state, is being goaded
by the weaker peso to invest more
back home in terms of property and
mutual funds.
“My Manila-based family gets to

www.businessmirror.com.ph

about this by foreign and Filipino academics and UN researchers. Also, a growing number of
non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), such as Unlad Kabayan,
Atikha and Ercop have some positive experiences in their savings
mobilization schemes.
The overall challenge is how to
make the mobilization effective
and massive. If 10 percent of the
total OFW remittances of $30billion annual remittances can be
capitalized, this would represent an
amount much bigger than the actual capital brought into the country
by FDI (different from what the FDI
simply pledge).
In this context, the proposal
made by former Vice President
and Foreign Secretary Teofisto
Guingona Jr. for the issuance to
OFW savers of OFW bonds that are
dollar-denominated and which
can be pooled by OFW groups
in support of social and physical infrastructures needed by
the country makes a lot of sense.
Why should the government focus on the graft-ridden official
development assistance-driven
infrastructure development and
why should the “Build, Build,

Continued from A1

Puka shells are bead-like objects
that can be found on beaches and
common in Hawaii.
The Philippines—specifically Boracay—has a variety of Puka shell species
that can be found in one specific beach,
hence, the name Puka Shell Beach.
While Boracay is known for its
white-sand beaches and pristine waters, the Puka Shell Beach is unique
because of its finer grains of white sand.
“Puka shells and fragments of Puka
shells make up substantially the sands
in Puka Beach and responsible for insulating the sand. That is why even
when it is hot in other areas, the sand
on Puka Beach is colder,” Lim said.
Lim added initial assessment of
the wetlands is frustrating. “Some wetlands are already gone,” she said.
On a positive note, she said some
coral areas on Puka Beach show
positive signs.
“There are new coral recruits, so
there is hope. There are also live Puka
shells. The population of the bats is
declining,” she said.
Puka shells are being overharvested,
so it must be stopped “before it is too
late,” Lim added.
On the flying foxes, she said the
government needs to strengthen
protection of caves where they dwell.
There are five caves on the island, three
of them previously classified by the
DENR-BMB as having unique features,
including being home to bats.
Flying foxes are also being hunted
by locals for food.
The team is coming up with a comprehensive report on their assessment
and recommendations.

Impact on workers

Meanwhile, the Department of Labor
and Employment (DOLE) said it is now
crafting a contingency plan to address
the possible impact of the planned closure of Boracay to workers.
In a text message, Johnson G. Cañete, DOLE Region 6 director and Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB-6) chairman, disclosed that they have yet to receive any
response from Malacañang on their
appeal on the planned closure.
He said they will be meeting on
Thursday with the employers and
workers in Boracay to determine
the aid they will need in case the
top tourist destination in Western
Visayas becomes temporarily off
limits to tourists.
“The DOLE Aklan Field Office will
be convening the Boracay Industry
Tripartite Council tomorrow [March
8]. One of the agenda is the impending threat of the Boracay closure and
its effect to members of the council,”
Cañete said.
DOLE Undersecretary Joel B. Maglunsod said they are ready to extend
emergency employment and livelihood aid to the affected workers.
“They can really help in the cleaning
of Boracay while they are without jobs
during the closure,” Maglunsod said.
He said they will start the program as
soon as the DOLE-Region 6 completes
the profiling of the affected workers.
Last week it was reported the RTWPB-6 submitted a signed resolution
urging President Duterte to reconsider the closure of Boracay Island,
which may displace 17,000 to 19,000
workers. With Samuel P. Medenilla

Continued from a1

Build ”-public-private partnership program for infrastructures
be marketed mainly to the dozen
or so elite business families and
their FDI partners?
The government and a number
of NGOs also have various initiatives promoting entrepreneurship
among OFWs, especially the returning or retiring migrants. There
is a need to do more documentation of good and best practices and
formulas for successful entrepreneurship for different categories
of OFWs. There is also a need to
reorganize the duty-free industry,
which has become a giant machine
sucking OFW savings in exchange
for imported goods and appliances.
Why not transform the duty-free
shops into real “Kabuhayan” centers, where returning OFWs can
purchase tools at reasonable prices to start small businesses, etc.
Big commercial banks should also
have special counseling centers for
OFWs and their families on how
to put their savings to maximum
productive use.
Skills and technology learned
by OFWs are also not fully used.
This is because the business and
economic environment is not

conducive for the application at
home of knowledge and know-how
acquired overseas. For example, a
number of skilled OFWs who have
been exposed to the productive
setups of small but technologicallyadvanced workshops in Taiwan and
South Korea, such as watch production and electronics parts making
under SME arrangement.
As suggested by the Global Commission on International Migration, there is a need not only for
more consultation with the migrants and their representatives
on issues and policies directly affecting them but also for greater
policy coherence in strengthening the national migration-development nexus. A good starting
point is for economic planners to
recognize formally and officially
that migrant remittances are the
main reason the economy has
been growing. And from there,
they should ask the question: how
can the nation’s economic heroes
and heroines play a leading role in
making the home economy truly
dynamic and sustainable? How
can dependence on migration be
reduced with the active participation of the migrants themselves?